Swarthmore- top value private college

[A.E]

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@D'yer Maker

I’m with you about whatever crazy quaalude-inspired model that USN&WR adopted to define the concept of “value,” but you sort of stray from the ranch when you get into this wider attack on “a biased media industry” and touch on the idea that its “bread is buttered by higher education.” Huh? USN&WR has lots of questionable metrics so I’m not feeling this idea of extrapolating from this one particular absurd USN&WR metric (out of many) to its being the byproduct of an entire subservient industry suckling at the teat of higher education.

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<p>That’s interesting and all, but I’m quite certain the OP indicated The Princeton Review was behind the rankings being discussed ITT, so I don’t know why you’re talking about USN&WR. How many masters do you think The Princeton Review has? Do you think that The Princeton Review is an unbiased source for information about higher education, or do you think they might have an incentive to rank schools the way they do?</p>

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@interesteddad

Just a couple of data points to make this interesting discussion a little more “reality-based”.</p>

<p>The average student at Swarthmore in the 2009-2010 academic year paid $32,403 total (tution, fees, room, board), not $50,000.

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<p>As usual, you provide us misleading statistics. What was the median, not the average, for a student at Swarthmore? That’s far more relevant to someone from a family with an income around $90,000/year. Perhaps you could tell the people who have already spoken up ITT about getting insufficient financial aid that, the “reality” of it is that Swarthmore doesn’t cost as much as they think it does. Business Week cites $188,200 as the “cost to graduate” from Swarthmore (as of 2010), which comes to $47,050 per year. It gives Swarthmore a 30 year annualized net ROI of 10.8, but this obviously neglects any interest paid out for loans or refinancing that a family might take in order to make the payments. Top public schools have ROI figures of 13%+, and a Swarthmore-caliber student at one of those institutions would be a favorite to do even better. How on Earth Swarthmore is seen as such a great value is beyond me.</p>

<p>I stand by my sentiment that it is disingenuous, misleading, and outright dumb to characterize schools like Swarthmore as being a good value in a financial sense. Swarthmore is good and bad for many reasons, but if I were an investor and college students were a financial instrument, I wouldn’t invest in people about to matriculate at Swarthmore. I would invest my money elsewhere. Why would I take a 10.8% ROI instead of the 14.2% ROI I could get investing in a Georgia Tech student?</p>