We Calculated Return on Investment for 14,000 Graduate Degrees. Find Yours.

[TryHardDieHard]

Link to the source article:
https://freopp.org/we-calculated-return-...3b4d6eefa1

[MNomadic]

After seeing it posted in a few other places I thought I'd see this study pop up here soon. 

I think it's very valuable to see the estimated ROI for your grad school choices, however, I noticed that they factored in lost income while someone attended school leading to some rather negative outcomes in some cases. I think a lot of the schools popular on this forum are generally attended while people continue working so the loss of income may not be a factor in those types of cases. Good info to have, I know I'll be shooting those $1 million + ROIs now. 

[bjcheung77]

6 months ago there was a thread for the Bachelors: https://www.degreeforum.net/mybb/Thread-...nt-Degrees

[Vle045]

Well heck. MBAs at a few schools I searched are in the negative numbers. Except Youngstown State. I looked up that one because it’s a low cost one that is sorta near me.

[freeloader]

There are bunch of questionable things, i think, in the methodology. I understand why they were done, mind you, but I still think they are problematic.

1. As MNomadic noted, there is an assumption that people are not working while in graduate school. The vast majority of people I have known in graduate school worked, whether full time or part time in a “normal” job, as a graduate/teaching assistant, or as a summer placement (friends in conventional MBA programs and law school).

2. There is a presumption that people earn their graduate degree in the same field as their undergraduate degree.  There is no room in this model for the person who uses a master’s degree (or even doctoral/professional degree) to change fields. I think this is a really problematic assumption.

3. Earnings projections are adjusted based on a school’s location. Schools in high-cost states are given “credit” for more income; those in lower-cost states are penalized. The model projects, for instance, that an MBA graduate of Emory or Duke will make less, all other things being equal, than a USC or NYU MBA simply because Georgia and North Carolina are lower cost of living states than California and New York. Evidently, people in this world don’t move or attend school remotely. There is not, however, consideration of varying standards of living. An Emory MBA, for instance, can have a comparable or superior cost of living in the Atlanta suburbs as compared to what is required in NYC or LA while earning less money. 

4. The average age of graduates is considered.  Effectively, programs are rewarded for graduating younger people and penalized for graduating older people. So, in-person programs that attract people straight out of undergrad are going to inherently look better than programs that attract mid-to late-career people regardless of actual salary increase. .

5. Over-emphasis on graduation/completion rate. The model rewards schools with high graduation rates and punishes those with lower rates. It also presumes that a person who does not complete a graduate program does not have any salary increase BUT they have paid tuition and have “paid” the opportunity cost of time not worked. There is no room in the model for the person who starts a graduate program to get a promotion, gets the promotion, and drops out because they don’t “need” their graduate degree; there is no room for the person who gets a new job/promotion based on their new skills or graduate credits earned in graduate school; etc.

https://freopp.org/how-we-calculated-the...c4865805fa

This model does not provide a calculation of ROI on earning a graduate degree. It is a calculation of ROI on pursuing a graduate degree.  The “data” literally calculates something different than what is promised.

[SweetSecret]

This is interesting but I also do not like that they do not take into account students who might transfer in credits, making their programs much less expensive.