Has anyone else seen Neil Parmar’s article in SmartMoney titled “Why the Ivies aren’t worth it”? Great stuff.
In this study, they looked at what graduates from 50 of the most expensive 4 year colleges earn in their early and midcareers. Then factored in their up-front tuition and fees. The result is a new kind of indicator they termed the “Payback” ratio.

In other words, for all the tuition a student has to pay, what is their ROI? The “Payback” ratio and used data from PayScale.com to determine, basically, how quickly a student earned enough salary, after graduation, to payback the tuition they spent on the school.

And, who would have thought it? Texas A&M has more than two and a half times the ROI of Harvard! (Full rankings follow)

Top public schools
1. Texas A&M
2. U. of Texas (Austin)
3. Georgia Tech
4. U. of Georgia
5. U of Washington
6. Rutgers
7. U. of Illinois
8. Clemson
9. Purdue
10. UNC (Chapel Hill)

Top Liberal Arts Schools
1. Washington & Lee
2. Richmond
3. Lafayette
4. College of Holy Cross
5. Bucknell
6. Amherst
7. Occidential
8. Colgate
9. Bowdoin
10. Ursinus

Top Ivy League Schools
1. Princeton
2. Dartmouth
3. Yale
4. Harvard
5. U. Penn
6. Cornell
7. Columbia
8. Brown

Flaws in the data that were also covered in the article. For example, average alum salaries included only those who stopped at a bachelor’s degree. And, according to Carleton College’s Dean of Admissions, “The real earning power is what they end up doing in professional and
graduate school.” Yale’s Director of Student Financial Services points to his school’s “world class faculty, libraries, and art collections.” Finally, the study does not take into account the private school aid that a student may receive – used the full price tags.