Return on Investment

Sure college is costly, but individuals with a college degree will earn millions more than their less-educated peers over the course of a lifetime. Certain degrees are worth more, even measured against their respective costs, thanks to life-lasting connections with other students, exposure to world-class professors and a gilded university brand stamped on a resume. But the pay off is more than monetary. Nostalgia for a well-lived undergraduate life is valuable during the years proceeding college, not to mention the payoff while students are still enrolled. To measure a college’s overall return on investment—in terms of money and quality of life—we considered Payscale.com’s ranking of the colleges worth the investment, ranked by annual ROI. As well, to measure how satisfied alumni were with the college experience, we included the alumni participation rate, or the percentage of alumni who the college has received hard donations from in the last year, according to the Council for Aid to Education. Each factor was weighted equally.