When it comes to accelerating ROI for students on price and outcomes, an abundance of career-oriented majors and thriving technical colleges are essentials for campus leaders.
A new analysis ranks the return on investment of all 50 state public university systems by comparing tuition and other financial factors to the increase in lifetime income that graduates earn from their degrees.
“While some state college systems succeed in moving large numbers of students into the middle class, others fail to deliver on the promise of economic mobility,” says study author Preston Cooper, a research fellow at Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity, an organization that works to improve outcomes for underrepresented students.
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“While maximizing ROI is not the only goal of higher education, students consistently report that their primary reasons for attending college are getting a better job and increasing their earnings potential,” Cooper adds.
Top performers include South Dakota, Kansas, and Pennsylvania while Montana, Louisiana and Connecticut, and New Mexico. For example, ROI at South Dakota’s public colleges is nearly twice the national median of $118,182 while the price and outcomes in the state at the bottom of the list was found to have a negative return on investment.
The report also identifies the most value individual academic programs in each state and the public systems with the riskiest returns. “To increase aggregate ROI, states should consider implementing performance-based funding and removing restrictions on high-value majors,” Cooper concludes.
Price & outcomes: ROI rankings
Here’s where each state system of public colleges and universities ranks for median ROI:
- South Dakota: $217,000
- Minnesota: $215,000
- Iowa: $214,000
- Kansas: $181,000
- Pennsylvania: $167,000
- Virginia: $166,000
- Arizona: $164,000
- Texas: $159,000
- Michigan: $154,000
- Nebraska: $154,000
- Washington: $144,000
- North Dakota: $142,000
- Ohio: $138,000
- Alabama: $138,000
- Delaware: $136,000
- Oklahoma: $134,000
- Florida: $133,000
- Wisconsin: $131,000
- Missouri: $124,000
- Indiana: $120,000
- Georgia: $120,000
- Illinois: $112,000
- Maine: $115,000
- California: $109,000
- North Carolina: $107,000
- Massachusetts: $106,000
- New Hampshire: $106,000
- South Carolina: $103,000
- Vermont: $93,000
- Oregon: $87,000
- Maryland: $86,000
- New York: $86,000
- Colorado: $73,000
- Idaho: $70,000
- Wyoming: $67,000
- Arkansas: $64,000
- Tennessee: $64,000
- Alaska: $63,000
- West Virginia: $61,000
- Rhode Island: $60,000
- New Jersey: $59,000
- Nevada: $57,000
- Mississippi: $54,000
- Utah: $54,000
- Kentucky: $43,000
- Connecticut: $39,000
- Montana: $25,000
- New Mexico: $21,000
- Louisiana: $18,000
- Hawaii: -$5,5720
