Is college a giant waste of time and money? The debate rages on BNET whether spending four years and hundreds of thousands of dollars on a degree is a smart investment. But while pundits and readers argue back and forth, PayScale.com was crunching numbers for an objective answer.
Surprise: the schools that provided the best return on investment were not necessarily Ivy League, either.
To figure out which colleges paid you back for your investment, PayScale calculated the median salary of graduates of a particular college over a 30-year period (1981-2010), subtracted out the earnings of an average high school grad and the cost of attendance and multiplied by the graduation rate. (Those interested in more details of the math can click here.)
Of course, this method has its limitations. Students who have the grades (and the cash) to attend the likes of Harvard and Yale are not equal in talent, connections or financial resources to those who apply to CUNY or the University of Arkansas. The difference in outcomes between these two groups is certainly not just down to which school they choose. But among the prosperous and talented, does it make a different if you head to Dartmouth or Yale? PayScale's numbers could shed some light.
So when all the numbers were summed up and the 30-year net return on investment was calculated for the universities, which schools provided the most bang for your educational buck? Read on to see.
(Image courtesy of Flickr user David, Michael Morris, CC 2.0)
