Interesting article from Poets and Quants - and it kind of shows the major, not the school, matters.
It’s their list of lowest initial ROI by top colleges. I’m listing here - removing the internationals which leaves 3 US in the top 10.
Note Oxford and Cambridge are both on this top ten list.
Poets&Quants For Undergrads - Top Universities With The Lowest Initial ROI
It makes very little sense to include international fees for a college (like in the U.K.), ie students who go home afterwards, and compare it with a salary for all graduates, most of whom are domestic (so pay much less) and stay in the country (with its lower domestic salaries) afterwards.
Berkeley suffers in this comparison too (since most students are instate and pay much less), although at least local salaries in the Bay Area are high.
Is that salary data correct?? For Cornell, it shows $55k. The Cornell - College of Arts and Sciences shows $86k in its first destination report. The other colleges would probably be higher, id think.
You missed Columbia. And I’m not sure where they’re getting the starting salary data. Seems very low to me compared to what the schools and Payscale are reporting.
I wonder how much of that is because those schools all have a significant number of graduates who are planning advanced degrees. Those gap year job experiences necessary for PhD or MD programs don’t pay very well and I’d guess are dragging down their numbers. In NU’s case, you also have Bienen and Medill students where those first jobs aren’t very lucrative.
I’d love to see the ROI data for 10 years post graduation.
Well, I am for one glad this is exposed. Glad my kid didn’t go to one of these horrible colleges 
…
Many student’s offers might be low but is this taking into account their entire package? Certain companies offer lower wages but the students signing bonus need to be taken into account, which I don’t think it has in these cases.
It would be interesting if they took one school and showed the entire class of what the graduates made and why. Not sure were the data comes from. At my sons school they discouraged accepting offers below a certain mark. These are all well below that mark from 2017. They actually had people to help you negotiate with the companies.
But I guess it’s all fun talking points so some parents can say “See, your making more than people that went to those A list schools”…
If you don’t put in any college and just a bachelor it shows a 73% response rate with an $87,235 mean and $85k median.
They email me articles. I thought it was interesting.
It looks like a UK company sourced it.
No idea.
But P&Q published it. I wonder what they saw…or missed.
Northwestern shows a 2023 average of 77,271 with Medill being the lowest at $57,$721.
For another perspective, WalletHub assigned a “Career Outcomes Rank” of #16 to Columbia, #27 to Cornell, #39 to UCB and #42 to Northwestern when compared to other colleges and universities nationally:
Garbage article as P&Q forgot to factor in grant aid for Northwestern University undergraduates, yet appears to have done so for Columbia and other schools.
Starting salary by undergraduate school at NU:
Arts & Sciences = $76,281
Engineering = $93,292
Journalism = $57,721
School of Communication (theater/acting & radio, TV, film) = $63,854
SESP School of Education & Social Policy = $79,765
School of music = $72,639
Most start in the Midwest which pays less than East Coast & West Coast.
The anchor is the Medill School of Journalism (the best undergraduate journalism school in the world) as journalism is well known as a low paying career.
P.S. Total tuition & fees = $68,322 (similar to Columbia University).
48% receive need based grants which significantly lower one’s COA. In 2022 the average grant, according to US News, was $65,227 which lowered the total COA for almost half of all undergraduates to about $27,000 per year.
Agreed the #s don’t match up but they didn’t just publish without research. I’ll reach out to P&Q and ask how the company they used came to those #s as they don’t match up.
Another consideration is that many “elite” schools are also among the most generous for financial aid. So the “investment” for some is much lower than sticker price.
There are a lot of blue chip investments which ALSO rank poorly for “initial ROI”. I can’t imagine an investment manager who wants to be rated on their “initial ROI”. What a ridiculous metric. The point of ROI is to evaluate a meaningful period of time-- so for a career, maybe 10 and 20 years? Does Warren Buffet care that he buys a chunk of a company and a month later the stock goes down?
No he does not. He’s buying for the long haul, in the same way that someone plans their career.
A resident in interventional cardiology is making less money initially than the high school graduate who draws blood in the path lab. That does that mean that cardiology is a low paying career vs. phlebotomy???
GIGO.
Poets & Quants made a mistake regarding Northwestern University tuition. P&Q calculated Northwestern’s “average tuition” as full pay tuition, fees, room & board versus other schools’ tuition. P&Q used a figure of $89,554 for NU’s “average tuition” when, in fact, the full pay tuition for Northwestern University in 2024-2025 school year is far less at $67,158. In recent years, between 48% and 61% of all Northwestern University undergraduate students receive significant financial aid grants which reduce total COA (tuition, fees, room & board) to just $27,000 per year.
In comparison, P&Q quoted Columbia University’s “average tuition” as $68,000 and did not add in fees, room & board.
US News recognizes Northwestern University as the 15th best deal among all US National Universities.
P.S. I read Poets & Quants website on at least a weekly basis. P&Q’s editing is not good and substantial errors occur frequently in P&Q articles.
I reached out to Meghan Marrin (the author) on LinkedIn. If she reports back I’ll update with the methodology or rationale. You’d hope they would have included.
Interesting they are such a trusted source because @Publisher noted so many regular issues.
This is 100% correct. A CS major from non-impact CSUs can make $90-100K from the first IT job in Silicon Valley, much higher-than-average initial salary from the top universities in the world. Even a CS intern can make up to $30/hour 
Companies that are downsizing their tech teams aren’t paying their CS interns $30/hour. Not if they can repurpose a current employee…
Schools like the Ivies and Northwestern have a higher than average percent of alums pursuing advanced degrees, so they’re going to show up as low income in the first few years out of college.
GIGO.
The numerator (salary) is at best a guesstimate for some of these colleges. Berkeley doesn’t even try to track graduate salaries (what ‘data’ they do have is voluntary, unsupported responses), so a researcher has to jump thru a lot of assumption hoops to come up with a number.
That said, I’ve given up posting that the UC’s are terrible investments for OOS, outside of a few individual programs.
This is roughly what I’m making as an assistant prof many years after getting my undergrad degree lol. And my students wonder why I don’t recommend a career in academia…
Colleges in general do not have data other than survey responses (and they also do surveys and present results differently from each other). The non-survey data that does exist is that used by College Scorecard, but it only covers those who used federal financial aid as students.