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  1. Education
  2. Colleges and Universities

What Makes a College a Great Value?

By:
Kim Clark
14 min read
The leafy quads of the University of Michigan, No. 2 this year, draw students from all over. - Photograph by Dave Lauridsen for Money
The leafy quads of the University of Michigan, No. 2 this year, draw students from all over. Photograph by Dave Lauridsen for Money

Everybody knows that college is expensive—and that choosing a school is one of the biggest financial decisions many families ever have to make. With tuition, room and board, textbooks, and incidental costs, a public university could run you $20,000 a year or more, even if you qualify for in-state tuition. A highly selective private college can set you back $70,000.

Even families who are well aware of the cost of college are often surprised when the bills actually start coming due. Half of today’s students and parents of current students report that college has turned out to be even more expensive than they expected, according to a new survey by Money and Barnes & Noble College. And the financial impact of the college you choose doesn’t end when you write your final tuition check or make your last loan payment. Jordan Matsudaira, a Cornell economist who oversaw the creation of the federal government’s new College Scorecard website, notes that which college a student attends can affect his or her future income by as much as 20% a year, or an average of nearly $600,000 in lifetime earnings.

Saint John’s University is a Catholic school for men that partners with a nearby women’s school, College of Saint Benedict, to share academic programs and campuses resources. Nearly 80% of students at Saint John’s graduate within six years, 12% higher than similar schools. FULL PROFILE Courtesy of St. John's University
Recently admitted CalTech students scored about 1600 on average on their SATs—higher than at MIT or Stanford. Professors are notoriously hard graders. The school boasts 34 Nobel laureates among alumni and faculty. Recent grads tend to get high-paying jobs. FULL PROFILE Courtesy of California Institute of Technology
Pomona is among the handful of schools vowing to meet student’s full demonstrated need with aid, so more than 70% of grads have no student debt. With 1,600 undergraduates, Pomona features close student-faculty relationships. FULL PROFILE Courtesy of Ponoma College
Illinois’s flagship university is among the top 15 public schools on the National Science Foundation’s list of high research spenders, and its strongest programs include accounting, engineering, and physics. Students also have access to the country’s second largest university library system. (Only Harvard’s is larger.) FULL PROFILE Courtesy University of Illinois
Clemson was founded as an agricultural college, and while agricultural science is still a specialty, more general programs such as business are more popular today. Most every one at this rural campus is united by an enormous amount of school pride, especially around the football team. FULL PROFILE Courtesy of Clemson University
UCLA produces a lot of stars: professors like Internet pioneer Leonard Kleinrock, grads in show business like Ben Stiller, and others in pro sports like Kareem Abdul Jabbar. The school also supports ordinary students as well, with more than one third from low-income families. FULL PROFILE Courtesy of UCLA
Like most large public schools, the University of Maryland has some all-star professors. The faculty roster boasts three Nobel laureates, two Pulitzer Prize winners and, thanks to the campus’s proximity to Washington, D.C., leaders in major positions at federal agencies like NASA and the National Institutes of Health. FULL PROFILE Courtesy of University of Maryland
While Virginia Tech is known especially for engineering, its business, social sciences, and agriculture programs are also strong. The campus Math Emporium houses hundreds of computers programmed with lessons that have boosted students’ math prowess. FULL PROFILE Courtesy of Virginia Polytechnic
UC–Davis has made a reputation as an affordable school that produces results. About 43% of students are low-income, but its six-year graduation rate is a high 83%. The school is best known for its agriculture and animal science specialties. FULL PROFILE Courtesy of University of California
UC-Irvine shines in serving one of the most diverse student bodies in the country: More than 40% of students come from low-income families. Yet the school still boasts an 86% graduation rate—an impressive 41% higher than similar colleges. FULL PROFILE Courtesy of University of California
The University of Florida is one of the biggest bargains in higher education, with tuition of just $6,300 a year for Floridians. For that low price, students get access to some of the world’s top professors, well-respected programs in fields as diverse as astronomy and journalism, and sports teams that often dominate their leagues. FULL PROFILE Courtesy of University of Florida
UC-San Diego is one of the top research universities in the country, with renowned science programs, especially in marine biology and oceanography. Like other colleges in the University of California system, the San Diego campus stands out for its comparative affordability for state residents. FULL PROFILE Courtesy of University of Califo
Texas A&M has one of the largest undergraduate student bodies in the country, with more the 40,000 students who graduate into an especially proud, loyal group of alumni. The college is well known for its business, agriculture, and engineering programs, as well as a recreation, park, and tourism management program. FULL PROFILE Courtesy of Texas A&M
Like its fellow high-ranking Ivy League peers, Princeton and Harvard, Yale is highly selective. But for students who are admitted, the college promises a very generous financial aid package and courses taught by some of the world’s most extraordinary academics. FULL PROFILE Courtesy of Yale University
MIT is one of the best known and most respected science colleges in the world. It’s competitive selection process and grueling course load produces results, though—recent graduates boast one of the highest average salaries in Money’s rankings, according to PayScale data. FULL PROFILE Courtesy of MIT
Stanford isn’t one of the eight members of the elite Ivy League, but it would fit right in. It’s the hardest school in the country to get into and has generous financial aid policies like Princeton and Harvard. But here’s a key difference: Recent graduates report average annual salaries that are $8,000 higher than those of Ivy League grads. FULL PROFILE Getty Images
UVA boasts the highest graduation rate of any public university in the country, at 93%. The university’s academic strengths are wide-ranging, and the campus is the only U.S. college to be designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site, thanks its connection to founder Thomas Jefferson. FULL PROFILE Courtesy of University of Virgin
Cooper Union is unique—a small, urban school that offers degrees only in art, architecture, and engineering. Though Cooper Union no longer has the free tuition policy it was founded with, it’s still much more affordable than other elite private colleges. FULL PROFILE Courtesy of Cooper Union
An elite liberal arts college, Amherst is one of a small group of schools that will meet 100% of the demonstrated financial need of students. As a result, more than two-thirds of its students graduate without taking out loans. FULL PROFILE Courtesy of Amherst College
UC-Berkeley, or Cal for short, ranks the highest of eight University of California system schools that made Money’s rankings. In fact, Cal is one of the most selective public colleges in the country. More than 90% of freshmen graduate within six years, a rate well above even other elite public universities. FULL PROFILE Getty Images
BYU-Provo is the main campus of a private college system specializing in educating members of the Church of Latter Day Saints. Non-Mormons can attend, but are charged more tuition and must obey the school’s strict code of conduct. The university has a high graduation rate at an affordable price for a private education. FULL PROFILE Courtesy of Brigham Young University
The typical Rice student majors in engineering, economics, or biology, and the university is also well known in the field of political science. Graduates of the selective private school fare well in the workforce: Recent grads out-earn their peers from similar schools by 16%, according to salary data from Payscale.com. FULL PROFILE Courtesy of Rice University
Harvard may be the most recognizable college in the world, and it’s practically synonymous with the prestigious Ivy League. Like many of its peers, Harvard excels in Money’s rankings not only because of the outstanding education it provides but also thanks to its generous financial aid program. FULL PROFILE Getty Images
The University of Michigan accepts less than a third of the nearly 50,000 students who apply, and is nearly as popular with out-of-staters as with Michiganders. State residents who get in enjoy an especially good deal: Michigan is one of 11 colleges in Money’s top 50 where the average in-state cost of a degree is less than $100,000. FULL PROFILE Dave Lauridsen for Money
Princeton University's generous financial aid makes it, according to Money’s analysis, the most affordable member of the Ivy League. The school gives out such large grants to the six in 10 families who qualify (families earning less than $250,000 generally get some aid) that more than 83% of students graduate without any debt. FULL PROFILE Courtesy of Princeton University

The long-term financial burden doesn’t fall entirely on the student, of course. More than three-quarters of the parents in our survey say they had made financial sacrifices to pay for their child’s education, from delaying major purchases to cutting back on retirement saving. Given that few Americans are saving enough for retirement to begin with, that could put them in a serious financial pinch after their working years come to an end.

Don’t expect to find all the information you need to make a smart financial choice on colleges’ websites or in the glossy brochures they mail out by the millions this time of year. “Colleges make it almost impossible to estimate the true cost of a degree, to understand and compare their offers of financial aid, and to see what you’ll get for your money, such as whether their degree will help you land a decent job,” says Mark Schneider, a former head of the National Center for Education Statistics.

That’s where we come in. Money and Schneider’s research firm, College Measures, partnered again this year to analyze all the latest higher-education data and apply the most up-to-date research to find the colleges that offer the best value for your tuition dollars—that is, a high-quality education at an affordable price and a head start in landing a fulfilling and well-paid career after graduation.

To see Money's full college rankings, click here.

What's new this year

For this year’s rankings Money judged colleges on 24 factors, including widely accepted quality measures such as graduation rates, affordability measures such as how much students and parents have to borrow, and measures of alumni success such as how much recent graduates earn. Another major component: Money’s exclusive “comparative value” scores, which assess how well students at each school fare compared with those at other schools where the students who attend come from similar academic and economic backgrounds. By controlling for the types of students that colleges admit and seeing how well they do after graduation, the rankings judge how much of a contribution the college made to their success in the years in between. For similar reasons the rankings also adjust earnings data to account for the mix of majors at each school. That way a college that graduates a lot of high-paid engineers, say, won’t have an unfair edge over one that produces more teachers or social workers.

While earning a living is important, money isn’t everything, of course. Some 90% of parents and students in the Money/Barnes & Noble College survey rated “preparing for a fulfilling career” as a very or extremely valuable benefit of a college -education—about 20 percentage points higher than the number who said the same for “preparing for a high-paying career.” As a result, we’ve added a new factor to this year’s rankings methodology, taking into account the percentage of a school’s graduates who consider themselves to be in “meaningful” jobs, as reported to PayScale.com.

The College Scorecard, a new federal website with information on alumni earnings and loan repayment rates, also supplied valuable data this year. We’ve incorporated the Scorecard’s findings on earnings, debt levels, and repayment rates (a good indicator of recent grads’ financial health) into our methodology. In all, the new federal data add the experiences of several million graduates to what we now know about specific colleges and the value they deliver.

And the winners are...

The colleges that are delivering top value today represent a diverse, sometimes surprising mix. They aren’t just the usual suspects—elite colleges that are accustomed to accolades—but major public universities and small liberal arts schools as well. You may be hearing about a few of them for the first time.

Money’s analysis also shows that status and selectivity, which colleges love to hype, often have little correlation with quality. Nor does a college’s published sticker price tell you much about what you’ll be getting in terms of educational quality or career preparation—and schools do so much tuition discounting these days that most families don’t pay it anyway.

No. 1–Ranked Princeton Awards grants to 60% of its students. - courtesy of Princeton University
No. 1–Ranked Princeton Awards grants to 60% of its students. courtesy of Princeton University

The No. 1 school this year, Princeton University, is one of those usual suspects—but with a twist. While it carries a price tag of almost $65,000 a year, fewer than half of families actually pay that much. Princeton provides grants to 60% of its students, including full rides to those from families earning less than $60,000 a year and smaller grants to students from households earning as much as $200,000 a year.

As a result, the typical Princeton student pays only about $20,000 a year—less than the cost of many in-state public colleges. In return, students get an education that ranks in the top 1% of all colleges in terms of academic quality. Plus, Princetonians’ average annual income of about $63,000 within five years of graduation puts the school into the top 2% of all colleges for alumni earnings.

Many public universities, with admissions odds more favorable than Princeton’s, are terrific values as well. Coming in a close second in the rankings this year is the University of Michigan, a top-notch public school that’s highly affordable for in-state students. Michiganders with family incomes of about $70,000 or less generally get full-tuition scholarships and often additional grants for living expenses. And within a few years of graduation, alumni report average annual earnings of $59,000—12% higher than graduates of schools with similar student bodies. Likewise, recent graduates of Texas A&M, a public university that took the No. 13 spot, reported earning about $55,000 a year—$10,000 a year more than the typical new college grad.

Read More: These Are the 50 Best Colleges You Can Actually Get Into

It’s no coincidence that many of the top colleges, such as Princeton, Michigan, Texas A&M, and Clemson, also have fiercely loyal alumni who are known to go out of their way to help new grads. In fact, our rankings give points to schools with formal programs to connect job-seeking undergraduates with alumni.

The University of Michigan combines big-school amenities with small-school attention. - Photograph by Dave Lauridsen for Money
The University of Michigan combines big-school amenities with small-school attention. Photograph by Dave Lauridsen for Money

Graduates of the 618 colleges in the rankings that provide such services earned an average of about $46,000 a year—$2,000 more than their peers at the other schools on the list. At No. 21–ranked Clemson, for example, the difference is more than $3,000. What’s more, the alumni advantage seems to continue for years. Mid-career alums from those 618 schools reported average annual salaries of over $80,000—$6,000 more than their less-connected peers.

The rankings also favor colleges that help graduates avoid one of today’s biggest worries: burdensome student-loan debt. Excessive borrowing crimps more than students’ lifestyles. “The more debt you have, the less flexibility you’ll have,” says Jeffrey Selingo, author of the new book There Is Life After College. “That monthly payment hanging over your head means you may have to forgo what could be very good opportunities, such as a good job or trying to start your own business.”

Research by the LIMRA Secure Retirement Institute suggests an even longer-term impact. A graduate who has to repay the typical student-debt load of about $30,000 will have less to contribute to retirement accounts over the years. By the time he or she retires, that could mean $325,000 less in retirement savings.

Low debt is one reason the University of Florida ranks No. 15 this year. Its students graduated with an average debt of $15,000—$8,000 less than is average for other schools on the list and $15,000 less than the typical college grad.

Build your own rankings

Of course, every student and family is unique. Your student may plan to become a teacher, say, and be more concerned about getting financial aid and not racking up debt than about pulling down a big salary. So along with our new rankings, Money is launching a new free web tool that allows you to create your own rankings by adjusting for the factors that are most important to you, such as a school’s generosity with need-based and merit aid and how likely its graduates are to end up in debt. Starting later this week, you’ll find it and additional online tools at money.com/colleges.

As you explore the rankings, bear in mind that college lists—Money’s and everybody else’s—are best viewed as a starting point in your college search. So don’t get too hung up on small differences in the ranking numbers. Because of the imprecise nature of the data available to evaluate colleges, there may be little difference between schools with fairly close scores. If you’re a stellar student who gets into Princeton (No. 1) and Stanford (No. 10) plus, say, the University of Virginia (No. 9), choose whichever one you think will be the best fit—because it has an especially strong program in your desired major, gives you the best financial aid package, or provides some other unique benefit. They’re all great, high-value colleges.

Same goes for B+/A– students comparing, say, Duquesne (No. 325) with schools in the same general ranking range, such as Susquehanna University (No. 313) and SUNY New Paltz (No. 345). The small differences among these schools will matter less than the financial aid package each college offers and whether it has strong offerings that match your interests.

To create your own personalized rankings, you’ll want to visit schools, talk to parents and students, and chat up alumni. These are some of the key factors to look for:

Graduation rates: Overall graduation rates are an important quality indicator because students who find a school lacking will often drop out or transfer to another college. But don’t stop there. At CollegeResults.org, you can check the four- and six-year rates of students, sorted by gender and by race, at each school to better predict your student’s odds of finishing.

Available majors and activities: College happens both in the classroom and outside of it. Besides making sure that a school has enough courses in your student’s area of interest, ask about related clubs and extracurricular activities. Gallup research has found that students who were most likely to thrive in college were deeply involved in at least one extracurricular.

Your real price: The federal government requires colleges to post a “net price calculator” on their websites to give you an estimated cost based on family income and other factors. The Net Price Calculator on the Money College Planner website lets you compare several colleges’ prices side by side.

Job help: In today’s ultra-competitive job market, internships, connections to active alumni, and the school’s reputation with employers are critical. Ask the college’s career office what kinds of assistance it provides. And if your student already has some dream employers in mind, ask the college which companies recruit on campus.

Equipped with the right data and other pertinent information, you might still be surprised by what college costs—except that this time, the surprise could be a pleasant one.

For more of Money's Best Colleges 2016-2017 coverage, check out:

See here for the full list of Money’s 2016 Best Colleges. If you’re not an A-plus student, explore the Best Colleges You Can Actually Get Into. And see how parents and students view college costs very differently.

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