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Education Dive
Private nonprofit colleges give students the highest long-term value, report finds
Natalie Schwartz
Nov. 14, 2019
Dive Brief:
Colleges that primarily award bachelor's degrees give graduates the
best long-term return on investment, according to a new report from
Georgetown University's Center on Education and the Workforce (CEW).
Students who earn degrees from private nonprofit colleges tend to see a
better long-term return than students who graduate from public
universities, even though the former group generally takes out twice as
much in loans.
Community colleges and certificate programs have the highest short-term
returns because they can give students valuable credentials relatively
quickly and at a low cost.
Dive Insight:
In the report, the researchers ranked the return on investment for
4,500 institutions by using data from the College Scorecard, a database
launched in 2015 to give prospective students information that could
help them select a college.
The U.S. Department of Education expanded the Scorecard earlier this
year with a trove of new data, including information on institutions
that primarily award nondegree credentials and student debt levels by
field of study.
The findings "buttress the idea that college is a worthwhile
investment," the researchers wrote, noting that students may have to
wait to reap their rewards.
For example, the median value to graduates across all colleges is
$107,000 a decade after enrollment. But 40 years after enrollment, that
value grows to $723,000. The report evaluates the worth of college
credentials by calculating their net present value, which estimates the
current worth of graduates' future earnings.
The value of a degree from an institution can "change dramatically over time," the researchers note.
Babson College, a private nonprofit business school near Wellesley,
Massachusetts, doesn't crack the top 300 schools when looking at its
short-term value. But after 40 years, Babson degrees are worth nearly
$2 million, putting the school seventh on CEW's ranking based on
long-term return on investment.
Eight of the top 10 colleges with the highest long-term gains are
private nonprofit bachelor's institutions. The list includes the usual
suspects, such as Stanford and Harvard universities, as well as
lesser-known pharmacy schools and maritime academies.
"If you look at this, you see that traditional elite institutions are
the minority," said Anthony Carnevale, director of the Georgetown CEW,
in an interview with Education Dive. "Specialty colleges tend to
outperform the traditional liberal arts colleges."
See the top 10 colleges here
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