The Real College Rankings

I got bored one night a few months ago and decided to see if there were any value in investing in a top-tier private college over a decent in-state college. The rankings provided by US News and other sources are all based on test scores, graduation rates, something called "selectivity" and several other variables all equally unrelated to an actual return on investment. I wondered if there would be a difference in the rankings if I treated the investment in an education like, say, an investment.

Just like any investment, I wanted to know the cost of the education and the return. (Technically, I should also include risk but I assume the risk is the same across all colleges. That is, there is just as good a chance that my daughter ends up moving to Australia with a tattooed surfer regardless of whether she attends UNC or Cal Tech.)

I calculated cost as the total tuition plus room and board less the average financial aid award (not loans, actual aid that would reduce the cost). For the return, I looked at salary information at 3 and 15 years after graduation, assumed a straight-line growth rate and then calculated the NPV of the entire 19 years.

The results are better aligned with intuition than with US News. In general, engineering schools and the traditional top-tier Ivy League schools provide the best return on investment. With the exception of Rice and Georgia Tech, the top 10 is not a surprise. But there are a few surprises. Columbia, Duke and Chicago sink in the NPV rankings. Vanderbilt, Northwestern, Washington University, Cornell and Johns Hopkins drop from the top 25 altogether. Also, if in-state tuition is used, Georgia Tech jumps ahead of Harvard and Georgia lands on the list somewhere near UCLA and University of Chicago. In general, residents of Virginia, Georgia, Michigan, California, Illinois, Texas and Florida have a significant incentive to stay in state. The top 25 are listed below - normalized against the highest NPV school, Cal Tech.

1. California Institute of Technology (CIT) 1.00
2. Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) 0.96
3. Stanford University 0.96
4. Princeton University 0.93
5. Harvard University 0.87
6. Rice University 0.86
7. Dartmouth College 0.85
8. Georgia Institute of Technology 0.84
9. Yale University 0.84
10. University of Pennsylvania 0.82
11. University of California, Berkeley 0.80
12. Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) 0.79
13. Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) 0.78
14. University of Notre Dame 0.76
15. Lehigh University 0.75
16. Duke University 0.75
17. Columbia University 0.75
18. Brown University 0.73
19. University of Virginia (UVA) 0.73
20. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) 0.72
21. University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) 0.71
22. University of Chicago 0.71
23. Georgetown University 0.71
24. University of California, Davis 0.70
25. Case Western Reserve University 0.70

Before you send emails outlining the faults in my model, let me admit them. First, this model assumes your kid is average in almost every way: average financial aid award, average salary, average salary growth, etc. It also assumes that your kid will get the "average" degree, which is to say an engineering degree from an engineering school. The only assumption this is not average is that your kid will graduate in 4 years. Most schools' average graduation rates are longer but the model does not include 5 or 6 years of tuition and the cost of the lost wages from those years. Also, the salary data does not include those who went on to get advanced degrees. It only compares investments across colleges, not alternatives to college. Lastly, this is a purely financial analysis that does not accommodate the qualitative aspects of the experience at each school (e.g. - who has better beer pong skills at graduation).

There are other flaws, I'm sure. But even if my calculations are only mostly right, it turns out that an in-state education in Georgia (and several other states) is a terrific investment. For now, I'm off to tell my girls that classic bedtime story about the Bulldog and the Yellow Jacket.

An Intellectual Who Can Probably Take You In A Bar Fight

I read The Week almost cover-to-cover each weekend. I consume it like a terrific meal, gulping it down and only too late wishing I had savored it. I'm convinced it was conceived specifically for me (I could do without the "Reviews of Art" section but, then again, maybe the universe is telling me something). It is presented in bite-sized columns and summary-length features. Somewhere near the end, I begin to yearn for something thicker to sink my teeth into. The Week always delivers. The last section, appropriately called The Last Word, is usually the perfect finale.

This week's issue highlights Matthew Crawford, who holds a PhD in Political Theory from University of Chicago, spent time as the executive director of a policy organization in Washington, DC and also runs a small motorcycle repair shop in Virginia. Described as "an intellectual who can probably take you in a bar fight," Matthew writes eloquently about the virtues of the craftsman. Far beyond being too dumb for any other work, he expresses the intellectual rewards and challenges available from working with your hands, in his case motorcycle repair:

"Some diagnostic situations contain so many variables that there comes a point where you have to step back and get a larger gestalt - have a cigarette and walk around the lift. At that moment, the gap between theory and practice stretches out in front of you. What you need now is the kind of judgment that arises only from experience; hunches rather than rules."

His book, Shop Class as Soulcraft, will be on my summer reading list.

Colin's First Feature

My brother, who is a Public Affairs specialist with the Coast Guard in Seattle, wrote his first feature article last week.

I am a fan of thoughtful opening lines...

"It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen."

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair."

"It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents, except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the house-tops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness."

Unlike these classics, Colin resisted the urge to use "it" as the first word in his first opening line: Starched white chef coats offset the team members from the background surfaces of the stainless steel counters, charred gas stovetops and an array of cooking pots, pans and utensils scattered throughout the room.

Bravo, Colin!

The Playoff Beard

It only took a mere two weeks to find something else worth blogging about (and the time to actually write about it). I have Andrew Potter's column in Maclean's to thank for my inspiration.


My take on Potter's column: men risk being gelded by a cultural pendulum swinging unchecked toward feminism unless they strike a balance between "archetypal wild men" and "metrosexual." For some time I have felt a unatriculated connection between my beard and my masculinity. Eventhough I don't play hockey, I have a playoff beard.

Colin Starts Blogging For The USCG

My little brother started his new gig as a Public Affairs Specialist with the US Coast Guard in Seattle this week. Check out his blog posts at http://uscgd13.blogspot.com/

The Zen of Blogging

I started this blog over a year ago with the intention of posting my observations on the world for all to read (well, all three of you). But I never really got to the first post. I've now realized that the problem was not knowing where to start. There is a passage from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance that sums it up:

“Getting stuck is the commonest trouble of all. Usually, your mind gets stuck when you’re trying to do too many things at once. What you have to do is try not to force words to come. That just gets you more stuck. What you have to do now is separate out the things and do them one at a time. You’re trying to think of what to say and what to say first at the same time and that’s too hard. So separate them out. Just make a list of the things that you want to say in any old order. Then later we’ll figure out the right order.”

So, there we have it. The problem of what to say first has now been solved. Let's see if it takes me any less than 15-months to get to my next post.