Top US Colleges Based on Graduate Salary
Because college is so expensive , choosing where to go for yourself or your kids is very important. The new study ranks two- and four-year colleges based on how much each college is likely to increase its students’ earnings.
The Brookings Institution explains how its value-added analysis works:
Based on public and private sources, this report analyzes college ‘value added’, the difference between graduates’ actual performance (eg, salaries) and what would be expected given student characteristics and type of institution. Value added reflects the benefits that arise from aspects of college quality that we can measure, such as the number of graduates and the market value of the skills the college teaches, and aspects that we cannot.
The value added measures presented here improve traditional rankings in several ways. They are available to many more schools; they focus on the factors that best predict measurable economic results; and they try to isolate the influence of colleges themselves on these outcomes beyond what could be predicted from student biographies.
In other words, they compare colleges in terms of their correlation with increased student mobility in income . You may be more likely to earn more by studying English or physics at one university rather than another due to factors such as preparing your school for a career or focusing on in-demand skills.
It’s probably not surprising that STEM-focused colleges are at the top of the four-year list – California Institute of Technology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology – as jobs in these fields tend to generate higher returns. But there are others on the list that you may not have heard of or don’t specialize in technology.
Follow the link below to compare colleges or see your school’s ranking.
Beyond the college rankings | Brookings through a marginal revolution