return on investment for various colleges

Chico Escuela posted:

Georgetown University just published a ranking of 4,500 schools based on return on investment (ROI) on the cost of attendance.  (Link is below.)  The data can be filtered and sorted in lots of ways.

There was a thread about this issue here not long ago: https://community.hsbaseballweb.com/topic/bates-1 (scroll down; the thread drifts from discussing one school to more general topics).  I stand by my comments there that these types of raw comparisons can be misleading.  (E.g., some schools graduate both engineers and a lot of future humanities professors.  Their engineers may enjoy earnings just as high as grads from schools that graduate only engineers, but the average earnings at the school with multiple degree programs will be lower.)  But, there are a lot of data here and they may be useful, at least as a starting point.

https://cew.georgetown.edu/cew-reports/CollegeROI/

Thanks for the the updated link to the list.  We found this to be very valuable when doing initial research for my older son. 

Isn't the field of study the most important thing? If you study stuff like engineering, economy, law, medicine, biotech, computer science you will probably earn more than if you study philosopy, literature or physical education, right?

Dominik85 posted:

Isn't the field of study the most important thing? If you study stuff like engineering, economy, law, medicine, biotech, computer science you will probably earn more than if you study philosopy, literature or physical education, right?

100%.  The top schools on this list are generally pharmaceutical schools, Academies, or full on tech or business institutions.  But  I believe it helps to see how even the broader educational schools fare on this list, if ROI is something that matters to you. 

Dominik85 posted:

Isn't the field of study the most important thing? If you study stuff like engineering, economy, law, medicine, biotech, computer science you will probably earn more than if you study philosopy, literature or physical education, right?

I think so.  Although if you study literature and then go on to a top-ranked law or medical school (which was the case for two people in my family), you can potentially earn more than you would as an engineer.  Or you can leave school without a degree, start your own business, and become Bill Gates (Harvard dropout).  Or get a scholarship and radically lower the investment required for a given return.  Bottom line:  there is a lot of info at the link and it can be useful; but keep its limitations in mind, too.  (IMO.) 

I do think these data are great for finding schools that most people don't consider.  I was barely aware that the maritime academies and pharmacy schools at the top of the list even existed.  For some kids those could be terrific options.  (But do they field baseball teams?  I have no idea.)