Colleges With The Biggest PAYOFF (PHOTOS)

With the ever-rising cost of a college degree and the dearth of jobs for graduates, many have begun questioning the worth of higher education. Compensation data site PayScale has taken some uncertainty out of the equation by completing an in-depth tabulation of more than 850 colleges' ROI, or return on investment, scores. ROI takes the price of a school's degree and compares it to how much that school's graduates earn on average, producing perhaps the truest measure of a school's value. Using 1.4 million reports, they calculated which colleges give the most bang for their buck.

We've highlighted the 13 schools with the top ROI scores below. See Payscale's complete list here, including a breakdown of the public and private schools with the highest ROIs.

And over at BusinessWeek, there's a state-by-state breakdown of PayScale's data, with a slideshow featuring the best-value school in each state.

Is this list surprising to you? Has your college degree given you a worthy ROI? Let us know in the comments section.

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Massachusetts Institute Of Technology

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Annual ROI: 12.6% 30-Year ROI (in 2010 dollars): $1,688,000

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Annual ROI: 12.6%
30-Year ROI (in 2010 dollars): $1,688,000

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Comments

[sfpayer]

02:03 AM on 07/20/2010

Lehigh U. No kiddin'. Best investment I (&parents) ever made, and not just merely for the ROI.

[hellsyeah]

11:17 AM on 07/14/2010

Tuition at Harvard, Yale, etc. is hardly an investment. Rich students in, rich students out.

[mikeyodude7]

07:48 PM on 07/13/2010

I guess they go solely based on tuition. Northeastern University tuition is pretty high, but you get three coops and give out ridiculous scholarships. As an engineering student, I haven't had to take out loans yet. That's kinda tough to beat, unless you're going to Harvard/Yale/MIT for free.

[LisaCACO]

10:33 AM on 07/08/2010

okie dokie, let's try this again. college shouldn't just be about the big payoff. it's supposed to be about expanding your mind, developing yourself as a person.

[michelesda]

01:28 AM on 07/03/2010

Wow, I don't know who built that building in the MIT picture, but I hope MIT was able to get their money back.

[maverick77]

11:57 AM on 07/03/2010

They just produce researchers...people who actually build stuff go to other schools.

[CentristThinker]

02:45 PM on 06/30/2010

I'VE HAD JUST ABOUT ENOUGH OF YOUR VASSAR BASHING!!!

[DirectProf]

12:21 PM on 07/02/2010

Thank you, Homer.

[larmarch5]

12:55 PM on 06/30/2010

Well I attended Texas Woman's University 1967-70, and my total cost for tuition, R&B, Books for three years including summer sessions was about $1500. Tuition was $50 a semester, R&B was $250 a semester, book rental was $5 a semster. I had a job 20 hours a week that paid $1 an hour. I got married half way through, so my new husband paid the $60 a month for rent. Anyway, since 1970, my 30 year earnings through 2000 were about $900,000, yielding a 20% ROI. One key, I was never out of work, didn't have kids, and didn't rely on a man to take care of me.

[TheJibreelaMonsters]

11:51 AM on 06/30/2010

The Colleges with the best payoff is majoring in a career that exist other than Women Studies

[larmarch5]

01:06 PM on 06/30/2010

It's not so much the degree as the choices you make and opportunities you take. Showing up is indeed 90% of success. Mobility is also a factor: willing to go where the jobs you want are. Finally, lifetime earnings is only one measurement of success.

[generalwrath]

08:45 PM on 06/29/2010

Having to deal with Dartmouth students I can say I fear for the future of this country if they are it. They are so stupid and are only ever drinking and partying, basically Dartmouth and perhaps all these "best" schools are expensive day cares. The D does not stand for dartmouth, perhaps it stands for Daycare, Drunk, or Dumb. Living off mommy's and daddy's money.

[palindrom]

12:05 AM on 06/30/2010

I think it probably depends on which students you deal with. The science majors, maybe not so much.

[CKMJr]

08:22 PM on 06/29/2010

"Congratulations, Lisa, you just graduated from the most expensive and therefore best school."
-Simpsons

[DesertDawgAlpha]

03:58 PM on 06/29/2010

The military academies dwarf all of these institutions in terms of results. They pay you to go there, you have immediate employment with great leadership training as soon as you graduate (not waiting tables, and see the recent Fortune cover story about the soaring corporate demand for young military officers and their demonstrated leadership skills under pressure), and many graduates wind up in positions of significance, whether in the military or out, including any number of CEOs, Members of Congress, the head of NASA, etc.


A demanding technical education seems to be a big plus (MIT and Cal Tech at the top), and this will probably grow in terms of differentiation as liberal arts majors continue to feed into law schools and a market for lawyers that is already grossly oversupplied.

But math and science are hard. You can't BS your way through them. But if Koreans, Indians and Chinese can do it, so can we (or else we can get used to calling them boss).

[carester]

05:39 PM on 06/29/2010

I totally agree with you. I myself would never be able to make it in the engineering field. Although I hold an accounting degree, I know that the level of math, physics, and all other science would kill me in a second. I happen to be married to a Math PhD and can tell you there is no way room for BS in that field. You either get the answer or not. The answer to the problem is just ONE. I truly admire ANYBODY with math skills. My son (11y/o) is one of them; however, it is hard-work and practice more than anything. He wants to be an Engineer and knows that in order to do so has to keep his math/science skills as sharp as possible. It is true that he has always being skillful with his math, however, there is discipline involved. For example: Right now, although the kids are on vacation, my son practices his Math everyday for an hour. He is attending a summer camp, swimming classes, music lessons, and Judo classes, but his Math is always on the list. I don't think that his dedication is unique to those kids who end up at places like MIT (his dream) or CalTech. Those kids maybe work even harder than my son. I think that they deserve it. Way before the tuition investment came along, the brain/time investment took place for those kids.

[DesertDawgAlpha]

11:53 PM on 06/29/2010

Good for your son and good for you! You are doing a lot of things right and he's the sort of youngster who in due course will be a critically needed leader for our country and world.

[palindrom]

12:08 AM on 06/30/2010

Good for you. It will come as news to many to learn that math is not necessarily drudgery -- for people who get good at it, it's often a great deal of fun, like doing incredibly elegant puzzles. But getting to that level takes patience and focus.

[Oxonian2001]

01:51 PM on 06/29/2010

The results are really not surprising at all.

Traditionally, ambitious students at the most so-called elite universities in the UK and US have sought careers in government (especially the upper reaches), law, and finance: the most lucrative sectors in the market. This was the ultimate meal-ticket, particularly for younger sons from aristocratic families who couldn’t inherit the title. And since the US has more or less always emulated the British, the favoring of law, government, and finance was perpetuated here as well amongst the wealthy.

So it's not unexpected that close alliances have been forged over the years between these sectors and the most selective universities. Outside of the "old-boy network" of close "chums," alums will almost always pick fellow alums. And lest you forget, this phenomenon is not limited to the most selective schools since many from state universities also prefer selecting others from their own state university.

However, what IS particularly disturbing is the sense of entitlement: as was heard when AIG and others were wailing about the bonuses. "I am from School X and one of the best and brightest, yada yada yada." It is this attitude both here (and most likely in the UK) as well that is poisoning our economy and society at large.

[mombabytiger]

12:58 PM on 06/29/2010

What? No Liberty University?

[robivecchi]

10:55 AM on 06/29/2010

All of their data is based on self-reported annual income in a survey of graduates from 1980-2009. No indication of how many graduates from each institution actually participated in the survey.

[pablogalante]

09:11 AM on 06/29/2010

Very interesting - I just feel that the kids going to these schools come from money already, Im not sure how someone would be able to afford that investment. I had to pay for most of my University and not sure if the goverment would have given me loans If I had grades for MIT. But the ROI is there, study hard kids.

Education in England seems more attainable seen as how Oxford only costs $7500 a year and the loans out there would cover everything including boarding.
http://studyabroaduniversity.com/

[Oxonian2001]

12:13 PM on 06/29/2010

And more rigorous too: just compare the different means by which undergraduates are assessed! (Although to be frank, grade inflation is beginning to seep into Oxbridge as more and more students get firsts and upper seconds over the last 30 years.)

I'm sure there are quite a few intelligent Ivy grads out there, but I remember that when I was at Oxford, there were so many who either failed or got booted out. And they blamed it on discrimination against Americans, LOL.

[DesertDawgAlpha]

04:00 PM on 06/29/2010

The percentage of 18 year olds going to university in the UK is tiny when compared to the USA. A university education in England is much less attainable for average citizens there. Youngsters are differentiated in terms of college and non-college tracks very early and there is little to no turning back after that.