**Data source:** CollegeNPV ROI estimates, which leverage Department of Education data to estimate the present value of degree programs taking into account graduation rates, expected income, debt obligations and contrasting it with the expected value of entering the workforce immediately out of high school. If interested, you can view my full rankings and more information on my methodology here: [View CollegeNPV ROI Rankings](https://www.collegenpv.com/)
The colors represent the average ROI of a specific field of study across all programs.
**Tools:** R, Excel & Powerpoint
Dang I knew I shoulda gone to Harvard.
I would prefer gray be zero and colors be proportional to ROI. For example, Engineering should be about 5 times as blue as Visual and Performing Arts is red.
Weird to me that Harvard Computer Science is at the top. They aren’t necessarily the top Computer Science uni. I would have expected Stanford Computer Science to be tops. Maybe followed by CMU CS or UCB EECS. I also don’t think there’s any way the average salary of a CS graduate of Cal Poly is 181K
I would like to see the median ROI personally it would be a lot more useful then just average.
I gotta say my business degree has been far more valuable than $205,000 and I went to Ohio State.
You should specify that this is for undergraduate degrees only.
A person with a communications degree can continue on to law or business school and make a excellent salary.
I want another chart that shows what percentage of people pursue each field of study.
oh no…poor psychology good thing I got a PhD
I wish I could find such an ROI on my math degree.
So this basically shows for engineering degrees there’s isn’t much of a different on returns for private vs public except on the highest ends which makes sense, non-engineering degrees can rely heavily on connections.
What they teach also matters, my state uni prepared me but not like how Berkley or Stanford prepares their students. Leetcode is big in computer science and there are classes specifically going over that in too unis.
As someone with a math degree and no job, what are yall doing lol
The bottom of this scale is making fake watermelons filled with cocaine.
Harvard CS has a NPV of a little over 4 million? This is BS. Way too low.
Ok wtf are all the other social scoence majors doing becauze clearly im the outlier here
This is actually somewhat pleasing to look at as well as informative. Rare upvote given.
Over what time frame? You can get an English degree for 40k in state public college. Starting teaching salary in the same state is over 60k.
Apparently, as an engineer, I chose well.
I honestly dont understand the numbers. I looked at the NPV inform on the website and it left me with more questions. These numbers make it look like average income but its not.. i am more curious as to what numbers they used to even get this.
Looks here like the biggest factor is major choice.
this would be a way better interactive plot than as an image. I’d like to actually see the schools in a table below and be able to go over the dots/see what’s in the high ROI cluster
Education being that low is depressing
gender studies > legal studies welcome to the 21st century
What’s the spike at $20k on private?
How are social sciences separate from Psychology, a social science?
Most interesting emergent conclusion from the data points is that colleges with a $20,000 annual cost is by far the sweet spot for most people. While there are outliers who get a higher ROI from the $80,000 a year colleges, the density and distribution of the data points at $20k matches closely the ones at $80k.
It’s also possible that a small handful of CEOs who came from the $80k annual colleges are wildly skewing the upper results, particularly when they’re making 600 times the average worker in the company.
weird one would group physics with geology
Gender studies with a positive ROI is going to surprise a few people. Education with a negative ROI is a big oof
I wish that $0 was the middle of the color scale and not the median. I feel like that’d make the color much more meaningful.
This needs to be a time series otherwise missing huge parts of the story
ROI over your entire life?
What’s that one pink outlier at the $1.5mm x $80k intersection?
This should be reviewed with every student and their parents before signing for a student loan.
As an English major making about $100k, feeling pretty smug. Mostly because I lack the numeracy to understand how much ROI I must have left on the table, but imma roll with it
What is dollar millimeter?
Why is University of the Pacific such an outlier here? Is it including the salaries of NBA players or something?
I studied geology so maybe graphs aren’t my thing because I don’t understand this one. Is this over a lifetime?
This would be more interesting if ROI were shown as a percentage return on investment.
Also, are these lifetime numbers? The chart doesn’t have an obvious time window.
![[OC] College Return on Investment](https://www.europesays.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/ldrr2787ynkd1-1920x1024.png)
38 comments
**Data source:** CollegeNPV ROI estimates, which leverage Department of Education data to estimate the present value of degree programs taking into account graduation rates, expected income, debt obligations and contrasting it with the expected value of entering the workforce immediately out of high school. If interested, you can view my full rankings and more information on my methodology here: [View CollegeNPV ROI Rankings](https://www.collegenpv.com/)
The colors represent the average ROI of a specific field of study across all programs.
**Tools:** R, Excel & Powerpoint
Dang I knew I shoulda gone to Harvard.
I would prefer gray be zero and colors be proportional to ROI. For example, Engineering should be about 5 times as blue as Visual and Performing Arts is red.
Weird to me that Harvard Computer Science is at the top. They aren’t necessarily the top Computer Science uni. I would have expected Stanford Computer Science to be tops. Maybe followed by CMU CS or UCB EECS. I also don’t think there’s any way the average salary of a CS graduate of Cal Poly is 181K
I would like to see the median ROI personally it would be a lot more useful then just average.
I gotta say my business degree has been far more valuable than $205,000 and I went to Ohio State.
You should specify that this is for undergraduate degrees only.
A person with a communications degree can continue on to law or business school and make a excellent salary.
I want another chart that shows what percentage of people pursue each field of study.
oh no…poor psychology good thing I got a PhD
I wish I could find such an ROI on my math degree.
So this basically shows for engineering degrees there’s isn’t much of a different on returns for private vs public except on the highest ends which makes sense, non-engineering degrees can rely heavily on connections.
What they teach also matters, my state uni prepared me but not like how Berkley or Stanford prepares their students. Leetcode is big in computer science and there are classes specifically going over that in too unis.
As someone with a math degree and no job, what are yall doing lol
The bottom of this scale is making fake watermelons filled with cocaine.
Harvard CS has a NPV of a little over 4 million? This is BS. Way too low.
Ok wtf are all the other social scoence majors doing becauze clearly im the outlier here
This is actually somewhat pleasing to look at as well as informative. Rare upvote given.
Over what time frame? You can get an English degree for 40k in state public college. Starting teaching salary in the same state is over 60k.
Apparently, as an engineer, I chose well.
I honestly dont understand the numbers. I looked at the NPV inform on the website and it left me with more questions. These numbers make it look like average income but its not.. i am more curious as to what numbers they used to even get this.
Looks here like the biggest factor is major choice.
this would be a way better interactive plot than as an image. I’d like to actually see the schools in a table below and be able to go over the dots/see what’s in the high ROI cluster
Education being that low is depressing
gender studies > legal studies welcome to the 21st century
What’s the spike at $20k on private?
How are social sciences separate from Psychology, a social science?
Most interesting emergent conclusion from the data points is that colleges with a $20,000 annual cost is by far the sweet spot for most people. While there are outliers who get a higher ROI from the $80,000 a year colleges, the density and distribution of the data points at $20k matches closely the ones at $80k.
It’s also possible that a small handful of CEOs who came from the $80k annual colleges are wildly skewing the upper results, particularly when they’re making 600 times the average worker in the company.
weird one would group physics with geology
Gender studies with a positive ROI is going to surprise a few people. Education with a negative ROI is a big oof
I wish that $0 was the middle of the color scale and not the median. I feel like that’d make the color much more meaningful.
This needs to be a time series otherwise missing huge parts of the story
ROI over your entire life?
What’s that one pink outlier at the $1.5mm x $80k intersection?
This should be reviewed with every student and their parents before signing for a student loan.
As an English major making about $100k, feeling pretty smug. Mostly because I lack the numeracy to understand how much ROI I must have left on the table, but imma roll with it
What is dollar millimeter?
Why is University of the Pacific such an outlier here? Is it including the salaries of NBA players or something?
I studied geology so maybe graphs aren’t my thing because I don’t understand this one. Is this over a lifetime?
This would be more interesting if ROI were shown as a percentage return on investment.
Also, are these lifetime numbers? The chart doesn’t have an obvious time window.