CCNY, MIT Top New University Rankings Based On Economic Value

A recent college ranking system lists the City College of New York (CCNY), the founding campus of the City University of New York system, as the #1 national university for the economic value it returns to its students. MIT placed second, and the University of Florida ranked third.

The ranking was done by Degreechoices, an online college guide and advice company that bases its rankings of colleges and universities entirely on a unique measure of relative financial value. (As a full disclosure, I serve as a part-time advisor to the company.)

Degreechoices’ college evaluations are based on the economic return students attending different colleges and universities can expect to receive from their educational investment.

Using public cost and earnings data from the recently updated Department of Education’s College Scorecard and the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS), supplemented with additional data from the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, Degreechoices computes two metrics which are then mathematically combined into an institution’s total economic score, upon which the rankings are based.

Payback measures how long it takes the average student to recoup the total cost of attending college (after subtracting financial aid) with their marginal earnings. Marginal earnings are the difference between what the average student would have likely earned before attending college and what he or she earns afterwards. This metric is similar to Third Way’s Price-to-Earnings Premium.

EarningsPlus compares student earnings after attending college against a benchmark that Degreechoices adjusts based on two variables that can influence salary comparisons – each school’s program ecology reflecting the unique mix of academic programs it offers and the in-state/out-of-state composition of the student body.

Take the case of first-place CCNY. It requires less than six months for the average CCNY student receiving federal financial aid to pay back the total cost of an education there. And ten years after attending CCNY, its students, regardless of whether they graduated or not, are earning an average of $55,741 a year.

At MIT, students earn $111,222 on average ten years after attending, and it takes those receiving federal aid under a year, on average, to pay back their total cost of attendance. Those numbers are consistent with MIT’s reputation for producing a large number of STEM graduates with very strong earning power.

To arrive at what is called an institution’s economic score, the factor on which Degreechoices ranks schools, a school’s payback is divided by the percentage advantage/disadvantage of its earningsplus factor. The lower the resulting quotient, the higher the school’s ranking.

A more thorough description of the ranking methodology can be found here. Degreechoices ranks hundreds of other colleges and universities in several different categories, including best national universities, best liberal arts colleges, best colleges by region, best majors and graduate programs, best HBCUs, best Hispanic serving institutions, and best women’s colleges.

Here are the top 25 national universities, out of a total of 436 in that category, according to the latest Degreechoices’ calculations.

1. CUNY City College
2. Massachusetts Institute of Technology
3. University of Florida
4. Princeton University
5. Stanford University
6. Harvard University
7. California Institute of Technology
8. Florida International University
9. University of Pennsylvania
10. Yale University
11. University of California, Berkeley
12. Georgia Institute of Technology
13. University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
14. Rice University
15. The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley
16. Vanderbilt University
17. University of California, Irvine
18. University of Washington
19. University of California, Los Angeles
20. Columbia University
21. Missouri University of Science and Technology
22. University of Illinois Urbana, Champaign
23. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
24. California State University, Fresno
25. University of California, San Diego

Of the top 25 institutions, 15 are public, including five in California that are part of either the University of California or the California State University systems. The success of public institutions may be viewed with surprise by many higher education observers more accustomed to seeing elite private universities dominate such lists, but they reflect the basic combination of affordability – many of these schools offer generous need-based financial aid – and a strong employment record for former students.

It’s college ranking season once again, and while surveys suggest that students and their families pay attention to rankings particularly at the start of their search process, many factors are – and should be – considered when making a decision about where to attend college. With financial considerations often playing the decisive role in students’ decision to go to college as well as their choice of the specific institution to attend, data like these offer one important source of comparison to help inform those choices.

David Levy, the architect of Degreechoices’ evaluation methodology, said the intent of the rankings was “to provide potential students a simple way to compare economic performance averages of different colleges and programs. We believe our rankings highlight a number of excellent schools that are often overlooked and under appreciated.”