A New Twist to the Student-Debt Debate?

Might a radically new take on college ROI change the national conversation about student debt?

A groundbreaking new return on investment (ROI) study from the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce estimates that colleges that primarily award associate’s degrees yield the highest near-term return to students—a median of $141,000 10 years after enrollment. But four-year institutions’ net economic gains rise over a longer, 40-year time horizon.

The results add several new twists to the student-debt debate. Example: Over 40 years the average graduate of a public college experiences a net economic gain of $765,000. But the average graduate of a private college has a net gain of $838,000, even after graduates have paid off higher accumulated student loans, according to the study’s co-authors.

Using fresh data from the US Department of Education College Scorecard, the study’s co-authors, computed the net present value of a credential from 4,500 colleges—and have posted their findings in an online database. Now, users can sort data on a variety of key factors, ranging from tuition to median student debt and earnings for each two-year and four-year public and private college, as well as for-profit colleges and training academies.

Up next: the feds are expected release graduation and student debt data at the program level soon, which will allow Carnevale and his colleagues to conduct more fine-tuned ROI analysis for specific fields of study. “There’s a second tier of [program and discipline] information that in many cases is more important,” Carnevale told Inside Higher Ed. “There is a whole substructure underneath this data, which will change this number a lot.”

Check out “A First Try at ROI: Ranking 4,500 Colleges,” by Anthony P. Carnevale, director of the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce, and his colleagues Ban Cheah and Martin Van Der Werf.

@GeorgetownCEW, #CollegeROI