Hey Monkeys,
Business Insider just posted this article in which they attempted to rank the party schools that are worth their investment. Here's a quick summary:
- Lehigh University (Cost: $219,200, ROI: $526,900)
- University of Illinois (Cost: $172,600, ROI: $482,200)
- University of Maryland, College Park (Cost: $167,700, ROI: $429,200)
- University of Texas at Austin (Cost: $202,800, ROI: $400,400)
- Pennsylvania State University (Cost: $179,000, ROI: $369,400)
- University of California, Santa Barbara (Cost: $222,100, ROI: $364,500)
- University of Florida (Cost: $168,500, ROI: $357,700)
- Miami University (Cost: $186,400, ROI: $337,700)
- Syracuse University (Cost: $220,100, ROI: $324,700)
- DePauw University (Cost: $192,600, ROI: $312,800)
The rankings were based off of a 20-year net ROI, defined as the (total earnings) - (cost of the degree) - (average earnings of someone with only a high school degree).
Thoughts Monkeys
Who the heck is spending $42,000-$55,000 a year to attend any of these schools? Seems like poor life decisions to attend any of these schools at those cost. Lehigh ROI is based on a job that averages pay of $37,000 a year higher than a high school grad for 20 years assuming you maintain the same pay each year without increases (Earnings=ROI + Cost & Earning/20 gets you average yearly comp). If you include a yearly salary bump of 5%, based on a quickly generated excel model, your starting pay out of college would be around $22,565 higher than a high school grad and your salary in your 20th year would be around $57,020 higher than a high school grad. Therefore starting pay would be $52,565=typical high school grad pay of $30,000+$22,565. Not a bad ROI.
But the way they calculated ROI is inconsistent. According to Payscale, MIT had the third largest 20-year ROI of $831,100 and Lehigh was 69th with an ROI of $526,900
http://www.payscale.com/college-roi/full-list
You are right, but in this case they only included colleges that were deemed to be "party schools". And MIT certainly does not fit that category....
Yea, I guess my greater point would be that the ROI on MIT/Harvard and etc seems pretty low compared to Lehigh. If you discount the cost of attendance (full ride at any school meaning no cost) and say that you have 4 student, 1 at MIT, 1 at Harvard, 1 at Lehigh, and one with no college at all, your MIT grad is making $178,700 more than your Harvard grad who is making $129,700 more than your Lehigh grad who is making $746,100 more than someone with no college over a 20 year period. The difference between MIT/Harvard and Lehigh is lower that I would have expected which has me thinking schools like Harvard's ROI is skewed by grads in high paying finance/consulting/tech gigs that do not respond to these inquiries (lowering average ROI) and further skewed by grads that voluntarily take lower paying public service job over high paying finance/consulting/tech jobs (also lowering average ROI). Thoughts?
I also found it interesting that once you get outside the top 15 or so schools on http://www.payscale.com/college-roi/full-list, the 20-year net ROI doesn't seem to drop drastically. In other words, the party schools listed in this article are not so different in terms of 20-year net ROI than some of the top non-party schools.
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