Is College Worth It?

As the price tag for a college degree is set to break the five-figure barrier—some Vanderbilt students will have total expenses of $100,000 next school year—the grumblings over whether college is still worth it have become a deafening roar. As we’ve noted in “The Rising Cost of College Tuition,” families are increasingly asking themselves: Does college make financial sense anymore?

Famously successful college dropouts Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Richard Branson, and Mark Zuckerberg help push this conversation, while the massive amount of U.S. student debt (estimated to be $1.6 trillion) lays bare the false promise that higher education guarantees financial security. The truth is more complicated.

Recent articles like Forbes’ “Is College Worth It? That’s the Wrong Question” and The New York Times’ “Report Helps Answer the Question: Is a College Degree Worth the Cost?” stress that most college graduates are still financially better off than those who do not attend college. The Education Department’s College Scorecard shows that the students who don’t financially benefit from their higher ed experience are primarily those who enrolled in for-profit institutions (think University of Phoenix or ITT Technical Institute) or nondegree certificate programs. For families concerned about the ROI of a college degree, comparing the median income of graduates from specific four-year colleges will be more revealing than aggregated data on vastly different types of higher ed institutions.

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Many families (and journalists) have moved on to these kinds of analyses, with The Wall Street Journal recently publishing “The Top Colleges for High-Paying Careers in Finance, Tech and Consulting.” Reflecting an apparent trend among higher income families to turn toward more affordable public universities, The WSJ rankings, based on data from the Philadelphia think tank Burning Glass Institute, goes beyond the usual suspects (Ivy League schools) to rank the top 20 private and public institutions for producing high-earning grads in the Fintech/Consulting sectors. While prestige and resource-rich alumni networks still ensure that Harvard, Princeton and Yale grads in these sectors outearn those at the top public universities, graduates of UC Berkeley who enter the tech industry outearn those coming out of MIT, Columbia, and Penn (in fact, only seven private colleges rank higher than UC Berkeley on these lists).

TOP 10 PRIVATE COLLEGES FOR FINANCE SALARIES

MIT
Harvard University
Princeton University
University of Pennsylvania
Dartmouth College
Claremont McKenna College
Yale University
Columbia University
Stanford University
Duke University

TOP 10 PUBLIC COLLEGES FOR FINANCE SALARIES

University of Michigan-Ann Arbor
University of California-Berkeley
University of Virginia
U.S. Military Academy
William & Mary
U.S. Naval Academy
Binghamton University
University of California-Los Angeles
Georgia Institute of Technology
CUNY Baruch College

It’s easy to get lost in a sea of data and rankings when considering whether college A or B is worth the more-than-quarter-million-dollar investment. And while a college education provides many benefits beyond a starting salary, here are some factors to consider:

A student’s major can have a significant impact on their earnings potential, with engineering majors taking 9 of the top 10 spots on CNBC’s list of median salary for grads within five years of graduation.
Not every student is destined to be an engineer! Beyond choice of major, the programs and opportunities offered by colleges’ career centers can launch students into careers and smooth their paths into the job market. The Class of 2022 Student Survey conducted by NACE (National Association of Colleges and Employers) found that graduating seniors who didn’t use any career center services averaged 1.0 job offers, while graduating seniors who used at least one service—any service—received an average of 1.24 job offers. And, for every additional service they used beyond just one, their average number of job offers increased 0.05.
Both peers and alumni networks have a significant impact on college students’ success post-graduation. For example, with “a combined enrollment size of roughly 6,300 students, The Claremont Colleges alumni entrepreneurs raised over $46B in the past decade amongst 315 founders. Even better, when you attempt to control for university size and look at capital raised per founder, The Claremont Colleges rank 2nd in the world and 1st in U.S. universities with an average of over $145M raised per founder,” according to Medium. With a synergistic consortium, and institutes and student organizations devoted to entrepreneurship, The Claremont Colleges outperform their size and reputations.
- Top Tier can help too! Our Career Planning and Academic Advising Program provides holistic support and career guidance as students navigate their higher education and plan for their future.
Finally, as TTA co-founder Dr. Michele Hernandez points out in her recent post “Where Do Billionaires Go to College?” “Attending prestigious institutions like Princeton or Harvard doesn’t guarantee graduating at the top of your class.” Whether college grads apply to law school, med school, graduate school, or even jobs, their GPA counts. Enrolling at a college where the academic “fit” will enable a student to be challenged but still perform well is something to consider. Before enrolling, sitting in on a class or speaking to a current student about the academic rigor will help students assess whether they can handle the academic expectations at a given college.

For the lucky few (Bill Gates, we’re looking at you), creative genius will be enough to ensure financial success and an outsized social impact. But for the rest of us mere mortals, a fulfilling social and academic college experience is still the most tested path to a successful career.

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Dr. Tina Brooks

Senior Private Counselor at Top Tier Admissions

Tina joins Top Tier Admissions after five years serving as Associate Dean of Admissions at Pomona College. Her career in higher education has included extensive experience as both a faculty member and admissions professional. Tina worked as Assistant Director of Admission and Transfer Coordinator at Scripps College before joining Pomona College, where she oversaw all communications and directed transfer admissions, in addition to her role evaluating first-year applicants in the admissions office. As a professional writer and editor, she has published in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Fodor’s guide to Los Angeles, and many college alumni magazines. Having served as a mentor for Scholar Match, a scholarship evaluator for the Davidson Institute for Talent Development, and an interviewer for the Gates Scholarship and the Posse Foundation, Tina loves working directly with students on their writing, academic and outcomes goals. She holds a B.A. in English with Honors from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a Ph.D. in English from the University of California, Berkeley.

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