Who can predict the future? I doubt it will ever be easier. Definitely not on the financial side. Costs will continue to go up and when colleges cannot get enough students to pay the bill, they will close. The schools will consolidate and kids will compete for fewer seats keeping prices high.
@merc81 I don’t trust anything in those magazines. Specifically, those ROI figures they base those numbers are on are not the full sticker price, which is what we were discussing from an ROI perspective. I’d love to hear from professors or others that are ‘in the system’. Do they think full sticker price is worth for the 10-40 rank LAC and National Universities.
@ucbalumnus: Though you fairly interpreted my comments as they actually appeared, my initial primary intent was to suggest caution with respect to the methodology behind available ROI articles such as that which I posted.
Where did you see this? Forbes states that they have “[presented] 10 schools that are pricey, but prove to have the biggest payoffs.”
The only consistent thing in this ranking is the reference to each school’s rank in the Forbes Best value ranking which is based on net price. I see no criteria listed for this “ranking” to tell us how they came up with the “worth every penny”. Unless I missed it
True, college ROI numbers often leave out important factors like the student’s major, intended career directions, etc…
Not sure we can trust the published numbers, but I always try to find schools that have higher projected salaries at graduation and 6 or 10 years out. The numbers are definitely skewed a bit because it’s not necessarily fair to compare a school that has engineering to schools that don’t, for example, or to compare schools in different parts of the country, but I do look at the numbers, nonetheless. My kids are/will be studying business so this is important to us. And I do think some schools are worth the higher price, based on what I am seeing. I don’t think my oldest would have the internship she has lined up right now if she’d gone to the schools that offered her substantial money. But there is no way of really ever knowing, is there?