We looked at ROI in a sense - but not for picking colleges, but rather picking a major. My younger son, a rising college freshman, picked a major because (a) it sounded interesting to him and (b) out of the many things that sounded interesting to him, it has an incredibly high “employed at the time of graduation” rate. To him, that was the ROI that mattered - will I be able to get a job. The major he was looking at (Construction Management) isn’t offered at a lot of schools, and I suspect that ROI the way you’ve defined it for the schools it IS offered at wouldn’t be relevant to him - because the major is small, it would be seriously undervalued in any overall college data set compared to other majors at the school. Instead, and perhaps related to what you’re getting at, we looked at businesses that recruit for his major at the schools to which he applied, the size/strength of those businesses. While not easily quantifiable, this gave him a better feel for what an ROI might be.