Measuring Schools by ROI

I was a little inspired this week from my Monday's post on the coming student debt bubble, and started to  ask myself how someone should assess whether they get the best value for what they are paying for higher education.  I immediately thought of a good old financial ratio called Return on Investment (or ROI).  What this means is that you essentially compare what you pay to go to school versus what you can expect to make in your lifetime.  

Ironically enough, a few weeks back, Payscale actually ranked pretty much every college in the US by ROI and came up with this list.  The top colleges seem to make sense from an annual ROI perspective, but Payscale went even further and incorporated student aid into their calculations.  When I sorted by ROI with financial aid included, there were quite a number of public institutions in the top 20 which is an encouraging thought.

Should someone only think of ROI when picking a college...of course not, but it's not a bad way of looking at things.  Obviously, other criteria need to be considered such as major, location, and campus culture, but I think you get the idea.

I know I had fun looking up my institution and I hope you do too.

Wonderful Moment of the Day: Happy Halloween!