WSJ Rankings 2025

College Search & Lists
41

I’m not sure what this means so it might mean the following, but I note to do a meaningful value-added study you would really need to control for individual and family characteristics that likely play a role in career outcomes. Examples along those lines include the Chetty study, Dale and Kreuger, and so on.

And really you need to control for self-selection as well. You mentioned COLA adjustments, which is definitely one important issue. But also, suppose more people in Major X at College A choose to go into government and public service, including education and higher education, and at College B more choose to go into for-profit firms. Then College B might end up with a higher median income for Major X graduates. But that is not necessarily because College B added more value, it could just be choice. And that gets complicated because maybe people choose colleges good for what they want to do, but maybe also contrarian strategies can actually make things easier sometimes (big fish little pond sort of stories). And so on.

To my knowledge, the data simply does not exist to sort all this out for every college on an annual basis. But for what it is worth, even with what I would consider to be a pretty incomplete set of controls, the above studies already suggested maybe there is a lot less value added for most graduates than many people assumed. As in, individual and family characteristics were really dominating college choice for most graduates with at least a fairly broad range of selective colleges. And I suspect if you really controlled for self-selection factors, the detectable value-added might decline even further.

Of course maybe if you were talking about very big “tier” differences, like Ivy+ versus regional and local colleges with low graduation rates, there would be more difference. And actually the literature kinda supports that, because they found that for the sorts of lower-SES applicants who might go to such a college if they didn’t get into an Ivy+, there was a bigger difference than for the sorts of higher-SES applicants who would just go to some other selective private or flagship public.

Still, I am not sure careful studies would find enough value-added difference to support anything other than very big “ties”.

Assuming you buy that (and a lot of people are still very resistant to the idea), then ROI differences within broad ranges are going to be largely dominated by: (a) actually having the program you want for placement into the career you want; and then (b) minimizing cost of attendance.

And even if you are not sure what to think about all this . . . a significant difference in cost of attendance is a hard, knowable variable. All this value-added stuff is very hard to pin down in any sort of reliable way. So to me paying a lot more for a college even when there is a less expensive alternative with the program you want is a pretty dubious ROI proposition, barring at least a truly huge difference in the nature of the institutions.

3 Likes
42

I agree 100%, but probably won’t sell papers/subscriptions. Ranking is just an obsession.

43

Does the WSJ site have the ability to then look at results via the subscores? For instance sorting schools by “Learning Opportunities?” I will say that I do find it interesting that Princeton scored a 73 on that metric. I would be curious to see how that compares with others.

44

I am just spitballing a more direct but general way to try formulate relative rankings. So in my example, the subgroup is CS majors. College A has a 4 year graduation rate of 90%, an employment rate of 85% (exclude from denominator grad school people), grad school admit rate of 80% (only include those who applied to grad school – maybe the data is not available) and median salary of $100k. This compares to the median of all colleges in CS of 75%, 70%; 70% and $85k. Now assign a raw score to the level of deviation from the median and weight each if you want. None of this can be predictive for an individual, but you at least get a sense of how institutions compare in general outcomes.

45

Sadly, I do not see that functionality.

3 Likes
46

Alas! Thanks for checking, though. If WSJ did I think it would have tipped me over into subscribing (hint, hint, WSJ professionals).

I do think that’s another way to get additional utility out of a set of rankings. I may not agree with the weights that the organization assigned to different categories, but if I can use their data to see how schools performed on the metrics that matter to me, I end up really appreciating the source. That’s how I feel about Washington Monthly’s ratings. Although all of the metrics it looks at don’t matter to me (or to the same degree), there are some metrics that I do and that are not so easy to find. Being able to sort out the schools by those other metrics is a really big value-add.

1 Like
47

Yeah, if you are not trying to use a ranking for individual college selection, then uncontrolled outcome measures might have some other uses.

Like, say, if you were a state legislator and wanted to understand how well your state universities were serving your state’s interests relative to your peer states, then you might reasonably worry less about these individual control issues.

48

Yes, you are correct with how the calculated salary impact. They used high school exam scores and income to rate the school’s salary impact and graduation rate score. Here’s an example, UF is ranked lower than FIU, even though their median SAT score is 1400, compared to FIU’s 1150. The research opportunities are far superior at UF, along with the average salary after graduation. Yet, FIU is ranked higher. In the state of Florida, it’s not even considered the 4th best school

4 Likes
49

Agree about Davis — replying here to say that the school has 25 D1 sports.

50

I am not sure what you mean by “vocationally-minded”. Rose-Hulman is a very small engineering school that does not confer PhDs, and focuses on undergratuate instruction. It is known for being very demanding and producing strong engineers. Kettering (the old GMI) is known for two things: 1. a co-op program where students get a lot of meaningful experience before graduating, and 2. being a feeder to the auto industry (many of GM’s senior managers, including Mary Barra, are Kettering alumni).

1 Like
51

When I said vocationally-minded, I meant schools where the bulk of students major in a field that leads to a career in that field So business majors going on to work in business or engineering majors going on to be engineers. In comparison, the other universities likely have more political science or English or psychology majors which are not generally viewed as a straight path into X career upon graduation from college.

2 Likes
52

I agree that even as a Return on Investment measure, this is just another useless ranking.

Is it even possible, or finally desirable, to break the data down by major and also by career choice (not the same, especially where the humanities are concerned)? And show us income five, ten, twenty, thirty years out, and finally retirement age wealth?

I don’t need to be told, yet again in barely disguised terms, the astounding news that engineers and business majors make more money than museum curators.

What I’d like to know—I guess, but not really, I suppose—is how Art History majors at University X do in respect to return on investment against a national average of Art History majors, and the same for every other major, including Business/Finance, CS, and Engineering (and History, and Sociology, and Physics etc. etc.). And then, do I really need a composite ROI for all graduates in all majors at University X?

Well, no, because anybody who expects an Art History major (for instance) at Babson to do as well in the artworld, on average, as one from Williams needs their head examined. As if the success of Babson’s business majors sort of “rubs off” on people studying subjects outside that school’s core mission…

At the point where such questions start getting asked, it becomes time to turn away from the impoverished abstraction offered by a given ranking system and toward that thing called “reality.”

As in “hey the reality of USC’s film studies program is that it produces lots of students who succeed in the film industry…let’s compare that to the reality of NYU’s film studies programs.”

I won’t even bother objecting to the whole concept of return on investment as the purpose (70% purpose?) of higher education.

Have we had any attempts at a “fulfillment” ranking? Like graduates of College Y are 20% happier, more fulfilled, more intellectually and emotionally satisfied in their careers 15 years after graduation than the national average? That would be a real knee-slapper.

5 Likes
53

Probably because Babson College does not offer an Art History major; Babson College is 100% business & management majors.

Babson College graduates report very high earnings after graduation.

1 Like
54

I expected someone would point that out.

The point is that schools with high-income outcomes often don’t offer the best return on investment for students specializing in non-high-income fields.

3 Likes
55

This really doesn’t make sense as a way of deciding which college an individual student should attend, even if it measures something about whether the college is doing well or badly.

Here’s a simplified example. Say college A admits mostly average students and their post-college income goes up from a predicted $40K to $60K and college B admits mostly top students whose income goes up (relatively less) from a predicted $80K to $90K. The ranking would say college A is doing better than college B (for example CSU Long Beach ranks above UCLA!).

If you are an individual applicant then only a top student would have a choice of whether to attend college A or college B. But there’s no reason to think that it’s better for that student to choose college A and subsequently earn $60K instead of college B where they could earn $90K.

4 Likes
56

As the parent of a Williams Art History major, I couldn’t agree more! My C has already had internships and classes that are as valuable to them as advanced finance classes and an internship at Bain are to a Babson or Wharton student.

6 Likes
57

“Attending a particular college doesn’t mean your cost suddenly becomes the average cost for students at that college which is used in the ranking.”

This is a really good point, people should not think that going to Princeton means they will have $8K of debt which will be paid off in four months, because they have an $86K salary after they graduate.

Conceding for the moment that Parchment college comparisons could be a little flawed, 91% of students that get into both UCLA and UC Davis choose UCLA.

“The ranking would say college A is doing better than college B” (for example CSU Long Beach ranks above UCLA!).

Similarly, 86% of students that get into both UCLA and Long Beach State choose UCLA.

58

Okay, I got a WSJ subscription, not in small part because I wanted to delve into the data a bit more. Since the rankings were first shared, the WSJ has been going through some sub scores like social mobility, best salaries, student experience, and best value. I am waiting with bated breath for the learning environment ones, but what they’ve posted still has some very interesting results.

My focus was on the southeastern U.S., excluding Florida. So it included Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia, which made up 83 different schools that met Forbes’ criteria (needed at least 750 students, at least 50 verified respondents from current students or recent alumni, and some other stuff).

Although people might (justifiably) quibble with parts of the overall methodology, I always find it interesting to see which names pop up that don’t get as much attention. Scores are out of 100, and I’ll break it into pieces so that it’s not too overwhelming.

4 Likes
59

I’m starting off with Best Salaries, as many of the names are more familiar to regular CC posters. The national best score in this category was a 99.3. Some surprises in this category included George Mason, Hampden-Sydney, James Madison, West Virginia, Wofford, LSU, Kennesaw State and Clayton State. Here are the top 25 in my selected southeastern region (i.e. excluding Arkansas and Florida):

School State Score
Georgia Tech GA 97.6
Duke NC 91
Virginia Tech VA 90.3
Vanderbilt TN 89.8
George Mason VA 89.7
Davidson NC 88.6
Washington & Lee VA 87.1
U. of Virginia VA 85.3
Hampden-Sydney VA 80.9
Emory GA 79.8
UNC-Chapel Hill NC 79.4
Clemson SC 79.2
James Madison VA 78.6
Wake Forest NC 76.5
U. of Richmond VA 74.2
West Virginia WV 72.6
Wofford SC 71.4
Louisiana State LA 70.9
NC State NC 68.3
Elon NC 68.2
Auburn AL 67.4
U. of Georgia GA 64.3
Rhodes TN 64.2
Kennesaw State GA 62.5
Clayton State GA 62

Here’s the methodology:

Our methodology for this ranking was developed and executed in collaboration with our research partners College Pulse and Statista. This ranking scores colleges based on the following components. The weight each component is given in the ranking is indicated as a percentage. Throughout, we use the latest data available for analysis.

  • Salary impact (67%): This measures the extent to which a college boosts its graduates’ salaries beyond what they would be expected to earn regardless of which college they attended. We used statistical modeling to estimate what we would expect the median earnings of a college’s graduates to be on the basis of the exam results of its students prior to attending the college and the cost of living in the state in which the college is based. We then scored the college on its performance against that estimate. These scores were then combined with scores for raw graduate salaries to factor in absolute performance alongside performance relative to our estimates. Our analysis for this metric used research on this topic by the policy-research think tank the Brookings Institution as a guide.
  • Years to pay off net price (33%): This measure combines two figures—the average net price of attending the college, and the value added to graduates’ median salary attributable to attending the college. The value added to graduates’ median salary by a college was estimated on the basis of the difference between the median earnings of the school’s graduates and the median earnings of high-school graduates in the state where the college is located and across the U.S. in proportion to the ratio of students who are in-state versus out-of-state. We then took the average annual net price of attending the college—including costs like tuition and fees, room and board, and books and supplies, taking into account any grants and scholarships, for students who received federal financial aid—and multiplied it by four to reflect an estimated cost of a four-year program. We then divided this overall net-price figure by the value added to a graduate’s salary, to provide an estimate of how quickly an education at the college pays for itself through the salary boost it provides. Our analysis for this metric used research on this topic by the policy-research think tank Third Way as a guide.
4 Likes
60

Okay, switching over to Student Experience. The national best score in this category was a 75.5.

Frankly, there are too many surprises on this list for me to list them all. Lots of regional/directional schools were listed here, and the Georgia publics that are rarely mentioned on CC were some pretty heavy hitters. In fact, no state flagships made the top 25! But U. of Richmond, Loyola New Orleans, Vanderbilt, the U. of the South, Tulane, Rhodes, Davidson, and Morehouse were private schools that did better than all the state flagships (or otherwise highly desired publics) from across the south.

Here’s the top 25 (there was a tie for 25th, so 26 schools listed).

School State Score
Alcorn State MS 70.3
Savannah State GA 70
Dalton State GA 68.6
Clayton State GA 68.1
Jackson State MS 67.8
U. of Memphis TN 67.7
North Carolina Central NC 67.6
U. of Richmond VA 66.6
Valdosta State GA 66.2
UNC-Greensboro NC 66.1
Kennesaw State GA 65.6
North Carolina A&T NC 65.2
Loyola New Orleans LA 65
U. of West Alabama AL 64.6
Vanderbilt TN 64.5
Jacksonville State AL 64.1
Sewanee: The University of the South TN 64
Georgia State GA 63.9
Old Dominion VA 63.6
Tulane LA 63.4
Rhodes TN 63.4
Virginia Commonwealth VA 63.4
U. of Louisiana-Monroe LA 63.1
Davidson NC 62.8
Morehouse GA 62.7
Georgia Southern GA 62.7

Here’s the methodology:

The WSJ/College Pulse Student Experience ranking scores colleges based on the following components. The weight each component is given in the ranking is indicated as a percentage.

  • Campus facilities (33%): Student satisfaction with the facilities available on campus, including those relating to food, housing and extracurricular activities, based on our student survey.
  • Community and social life (33%): Student satisfaction with the sense of community, emotional-health and mental-health support, sustainability, safety on campus, and party scene, based on our student survey.
  • Diversity (33%): A combination of diversity in terms of ethnicity, inclusion of students with lower family incomes, and inclusion of students with disabilities, all based on government data, together with the quality and frequency of opportunities to interact with students from different backgrounds, based on our student survey.
2 Likes