Colleges NOT Worth Their Tuition (PHOTOS)

How much is your college education really worth? Are you taking advantage of what you paid (or are paying, or will pay) for?

According to a return on investment report from salary data site PayScale, the sticker price of some American schools outweighs the benefits of its degree. Sure, some recent graduates leave college with a handle on Rousseau and microeconomics, but they aren't necessarily making back what they spent on those four (five, or six) years. PayScale's data reinforces that notion: Out of the 800-plus schools the site surveyed, some of the priciest institutions produce more graduates whose 30-year earnings hardly measure up to the price of four years of tuition. According to a report in BusinessWeek, schools that cost approximately $190,000 often have a 30-year net return on investment below $280,000.

In the following slideshow, based on BusinessWeek's list of the 20 institutions of higher education with the highest tuition and lowest ROI, are ten of the schools with the smallest payoffs. See BusinessWeek's full list here -- and check out PayScale's complete ROI database.

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Willamette University

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Average cost, 2009: $197,100 30-year return on investment: $153,000 National return on investment rank: 717

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Average cost, 2009: $197,100
30-year return on investment: $153,000
National return on investment rank: 717

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Balloon-Boy said on 26 Monday 2010 pm31 7:32 pm: Seriously, how much is there to learn about marketing that you went all the way to get the masters degree? You just played right into the university's scam. You can learn everything about marketing by attending one of the trade schools. It would've taken only about 12 months and $10K. Heck, I know guys who never went to high school employed as marketing managers.

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Comments

[Meyer Weinstock]

03:34 PM on 08/05/2010

Where's Claremont? That biggest waste of my parent's money...I hate Pitzer College...I should have said yes to Princeton when I had the chance (Early Admit). So, $16,500 @ 4 yrs, = 66K + books and we still used typewriters back then. My 1st yr w/ a BA = $14K salary. NOT WORTH IT!
And now the school's tutition is close to 60K annually? STAY AWAY FROM THE UG SCHOOLS @ CLAREMONT, California. -bitter college professor

[schmorange]

10:52 AM on 08/06/2010

Who picks Claremont over Princeton, anyway??

BTW, Princeton adopted early decision in 1995. You were still toting around a typewriter in the late 1990s?

[LeftyJen]

09:10 AM on 08/03/2010

Willamette is considered one of the very best schools here in Oregon. You pay for both the education and the connections the school has. It's literally right across the street from the Oregon capitol building and supreme court. Students have a huge amount of access to internships and other opportunities with the legislature. The school is very respected in the northwest, especially in Oregon. These are things you can't put into dollar amounts.

[Ravich]

04:57 PM on 08/05/2010

Yeah, it's pretty silly to rate a liberal arts college tuition value according to how much money graduates make on average. If you go to a liberal arts college prioritizing how high your salary will be when you graduate, you're doing it wrong.

[bridge to somewhere]

03:10 AM on 08/08/2010

Their formula completely ignores the kinds of majors these universities offer. If willamette had a pre-med program or large undergraduate business school, it the results would be quite different. They also ignore the fact that Willamette has a graduate law school...which increases the average cost. They also fail to mention how much financial aid is given to the average student.

All in all, one of the worst Business Week articles ever.

[NewYorker1978]

03:27 PM on 07/30/2010

There are many problems with colleges today, with tuition being at the top of the list. Tuition has gone up, but the quality of education has, at best, remained the same. Colleges spend ridiculous amounts of money on administration as opposed to teaching. Tenure needs to be refined, or even abolished. Many tenured professors spend very little time actually educating. They research and sit on numerous committees talking their brains out. Their TA's do most of the heavy lifting. Teaching ability should be a big factor when determining tenure. Also, colleges look to save money by hiring adjuncts and paying them a pittance. If colleges want to save money, they should trim the fat from administration, not pay adjuncts next to nothing. Colleges need to go back to focusing on teaching.

[clearthinker2008]

07:43 AM on 08/03/2010

Who says they want to save money?

[collegehousingreview]

01:53 PM on 07/30/2010

Not many colleges are worth their tuition to a lot of people right now. I don't know anyone who has graduated in the past of couple years with a 'real' job.

[ConcernedStatistician]

02:44 AM on 07/30/2010

One of my coworkers pointed me to this abysmal ranking. It seems that both the cost and the income have major issues among its graduation caluclations. While cost is defrayed by loans and grants, the private school at which I work provides a huge amount of grants. If those grants are not considered, and they can be the majority of the tuition (though often less), it seems the ranking is damned by its sloppy method.

[pownedPetey]

12:46 AM on 07/30/2010

A far better ranking is USNews - http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges

[sgufan]

01:26 AM on 07/30/2010

US News is a good source, but it depends on the type of school. Forbes also has good information.

[Anya86]

12:37 AM on 07/30/2010

Where is Liberty U? The ranking does not really consider quality of education and it has big problems.

[fopplssiegeparty]

10:19 PM on 08/03/2010

Is this a joke?

[joerobert]

09:22 PM on 07/29/2010

College is expensive. Ignorance is more expensive. We could provide a lot more students with Pell Grants and aid for college if we got out of Iraq and Afghanistan.

[sgufan]

01:36 AM on 07/30/2010

How many educations could be purchased for a trillion dollars? That is Iraq alone. How many grants could be given to develop renewable energy or to creat e the infrastructure for electric vehicles.

[aellenwood]

02:18 AM on 07/30/2010

I'm not sure that this is the place for that discussion, but I agree. Put that money toward repayment of non-profit college tuition.

[thereisonlyoneparty]

10:43 AM on 07/30/2010

An college "education" is not the opposite of ignorance though.

I know lots of ignorant people who have degrees. College did little for them. They learned enough to get by.

Why take money wasted in one place and waste it someplace else? How is that an intelligent plan?

[up420oz]

11:57 PM on 07/30/2010

A, not An is the correct english.

went to college much?

[charli3burr]

09:09 PM on 07/29/2010

"The study used pay reports from only full-time U.S. employees with bachelors degrees and no advanced degrees." So, if you go to grad school you're excluded. It seems like those would be a school's highest earners.

[EdNigma]

08:35 PM on 07/29/2010

Skidmore is a good school. All of these rankings are inconsistent, as pointed out already. When I looked for colleges (about 10 years ago), the private colleges and public colleges were pretty similar in cost after you counted aid. I have a good job and stopped after my BA tho my intent was to go on to grad school. Glad I didn't at this point, but I there is no doubt it was a valuable experience.

[ration al]

08:14 PM on 07/29/2010

All of the best value schools are engineering schools, which is great if you know you want to be an engineer. Part of the college is learning about a bunch of different subjects so that you have a broad base of knowledge. Money isn't everything.
After working at a law firm, I learned how much it matters do something you love for a living. Life is too short for a job you dislike, even if it makes bank.

[Sophia D]

01:12 AM on 07/30/2010

Getting to influence young people to pursue their dreams is worth more than a 6 figure salary.

[sgufan]

01:31 AM on 07/30/2010

Lawyers would not be eligible. I wonder if work-study or internships are included. Internships can matter more to actually getting a job.

[robert littleton]

07:59 PM on 07/29/2010

How can you judge return on investment without real cost? This seems fishy.

[aellenwood]

02:20 AM on 07/30/2010

A lot of aid is not loans. I have attended both a private and a public university. The private cost more, but I had a lot more non-aid loan. I also had smaller classes and a much closer relationship with most of the profs. At the public school, I had larger classes but excellent relationships with my advisers, who were ultimately key to getting my job.

[addisonsteele]

01:22 PM on 07/28/2010

As a freshman, I took a number of roadtrips to Saratoga Springs to visit Skidmore. At that time (I will not say how many decades ago), the women at Skidmore were predominately from wealthy families and expected to be stay-at-home wives with wealthy husbands, so the return on the educational investment was a moot point.

[runfellow]

12:19 PM on 07/28/2010

Many of the major complaints here regard financial aid and what percentage of students at the university receive it. Okay, so 90% of your students get financial aid. Trouble is, they don't receive a proportional amount. I'm going to grad school at a good public university next fall and technically I'm getting "financial aid" in the form of a few grants, but it's a drop in the bucket compared to the total amount and I'm even getting in-state tuition.

This "90% gets financial aid" crap is pointless. How much is the aid? Do you count loans as aid? Because if so, your numbers are pretty useless. How much does the average student pay for four years? If you really think that other universities don't give aid as well (thus leveling the playing field somewhat) then I'm not sure what I could do to wake you up out of the fantasy land you live in.

[adam wu]

01:02 PM on 07/28/2010

Loans are not considered financial aid. Look at the report for the average amount of financial aid. It is not wholly accurate, but it is a reasonable estimate; it is a large percentage of the cost. Problem is, they didn't include it in the ranking calculation.

For many private non-profit universities, unsubsidized by state tax dollars, aid is distributed based on need and merit rather than being built into the sticker price. As you noted, financial aid at your institution is a drop in the bucket. I would not consider this a drop in the bucket:

Annual Tuition and Fees: $37,361
Average Financial Aid Package: $29,353

The analysis fails to include such aid, which is NOT a loan. This report is the fantasy land. It is crap "journalism" designed to get web hits from common search terms.

It is completely inconsistent with what more responsible journalists have found when using actual data to weigh ROI.

It doesn't even agree with itself:
http://images.businessweek.com/ss/10/06/0628_payscale1/39.htm

Adam Torgerson
Willamette University

[conviventia]

09:26 PM on 07/28/2010

A "financial aid package" does include loans.

[wu student]

02:35 AM on 07/30/2010

I can say that I got a large non-loan financial aid package. It was almost half of the tuition, but I did have very high test scores. As I figure the ROI, it would make it off by double if that aid was omitted. Since I hope to go to grad school though (maybe in a year or two), it won't count if I ever hear from the survey company.

My education shaped my life. It led me through a path that I would never have foreseen, and I am happy. I make a little less than I planned, but I am happy and can support myself with a comfortable life while I try to minimize me and my partner's impact on the planet.

[Delaware22]

11:19 PM on 07/27/2010

Most of the recent college grads I know (Cornell, Syracuse, PSU, UVA, UD) can't find work other than waitressing and bartending. Most have huge student loan debt and live at home. Some are going to grad school, mostly because they can't find work. The few that do have jobs in their field of study attended Universities with 5-yr. internship programs. I will be pushing hard for my next child to attend a University with a strong internship program. Today, in this economy, having a degree from a good school isn't enough.