With tuitions hitting record high levels and a seemingly endless parade of negative news around colleges, families are increasingly focused on the real ‘value’ of a college education. Evidence of increasing skepticism can be seen in both a 2022 EAB survey of 2000+ parents which showed them to be less trusting and convinced in the value of college while a more recent 407 parent survey by AcceptU showed parents to be increasingly focused on economic outcomes when deciding on their children’s college.
We have long believed that families should focus less on status, selectivity and cost while focusing more on multiyear outcomes when determining the value of colleges. As of late , more families have asked us about the career outcomes of graduates when thinking about their target schools, a trend we feel is increasing.
With another year of increased selectivity behind us we thought it would be a good time to mention some schools we think represent real value. The truth is that top schools like MIT, Stanford and Princeton position their graduates for fantastic employment outcomes but with ridiculously low acceptance rates, it is hard to argue that they are undiscovered and represent ‘value’. However, there are a number of schools that have excellent post graduate employment options and acceptance rates of 40% and above. In our opinion, these schools represent significant potential ‘value’ to families applying to college. .
Our analysis looks at early career median salary data from Payscale that we adjust for the percentage of students involved in STEM majors as well as data from Georgetown’s Center on Education and the Workforce and selected college Common Data Sets. According to our analysis, the top schools for high post graduate salary levels and employment rates with fairly high acceptance rates (40%+) are the following.
Stevens Institute
Santa Clara University
Kettering University
Bentley College
Clarkson University
Union College
RIT
San Jose State University
University of Illinois Urbana Champaign
Manhattan College
University of Washington Seattle
Seattle University
Wabash College
SMU
While there are significant differences between the schools on the above list we think all of them represent ‘value’ and are worth a look if ‘value’ is an important college search criteria.
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