BIG EAST ROI AND COST - a surprise or two

[X-man]

Hard to give much cred to a ranking system that has Carlton at #837 and Middlebury at #886. There is something suspect here, and I am guessing that it involves a non-random sample of alumni salary data for each school on the list. I am not saying that Xavier deserves to be near the top of the list, but something smells in this report.

[hoyahooligan]

Hard to give much cred to a ranking system that has Carlton at #837 and Middlebury at #886. There is something suspect here, and I am guessing that it involves a non-random sample of alumni salary data for each school on the list. I am not saying that Xavier deserves to be near the top of the list, but something smells in this report.

Are you upset that Carlton is ahead of Middlebury or that both are so low? Liberal Arts colleges are a terrible investment especially since the economic downturn.

[X-man]

Hard to give much cred to a ranking system that has Carlton at #837 and Middlebury at #886. There is something suspect here, and I am guessing that it involves a non-random sample of alumni salary data for each school on the list. I am not saying that Xavier deserves to be near the top of the list, but something smells in this report.

Are you upset that Carlton is ahead of Middlebury or that both are so low? Liberal Arts colleges are a terrible investment especially since the economic downturn.

I don't believe that either should be ranked so low. I do agree with you that liberal arts degrees can be a bad "investment", but that isn't true at the very best of the liberal arts institutions, which both Middlebury and Carlton are. And to continue my point in the earlier post, I did notice that the data collected used to create these rankings are decidedly non-random (in the description of the methodology). As a Hoya fan, you might be interested to know that one of the most reliable recent studies of what a college degree is worth came from Georgetown. And that study put the average lifetime income bump from getting a 4-year degree rather than going straight into the job market from high school was in excess of $1.1 million. This did not include any additional income bump from going on to graduate school. So the numbers in the study cited above simply don't "add up".

[ChelseaFriar]

Hard to give much cred to a ranking system that has Carlton at #837 and Middlebury at #886. There is something suspect here, and I am guessing that it involves a non-random sample of alumni salary data for each school on the list. I am not saying that Xavier deserves to be near the top of the list, but something smells in this report.

Are you upset that Carlton is ahead of Middlebury or that both are so low? Liberal Arts colleges are a terrible investment especially since the economic downturn.

I don't believe that either should be ranked so low. I do agree with you that liberal arts degrees can be a bad "investment", but that isn't true at the very best of the liberal arts institutions, which both Middlebury and Carlton are. And to continue my point in the earlier post, I did notice that the data collected used to create these rankings are decidedly non-random (in the description of the methodology). As a Hoya fan, you might be interested to know that one of the most reliable recent studies of what a college degree is worth came from Georgetown. And that study put the average lifetime income bump from getting a 4-year degree rather than going straight into the job market from high school was in excess of $1.1 million. This did not include any additional income bump from going on to graduate school. So the numbers in the study cited above simply don't "add up".

Yeah, all the NESCAC schools (Amherst, Williams, Middlebury, Wesleyan, etc.) are very solid and hard to believe they would fall so low.