The latest batch of college rankings has us thinking: about our perception of the value of college, about how individual colleges are evolving, and about what really makes a school “good.”
ROI Dominates the Latest College Rankings
It’s that time of year again, when media companies release their college rankings and families start checking the lists to see if their choices have made the top 25.
Academic reputation has always been a leading criterion in rankings. But with the continued rise of tuition, plunging acceptance rates at the most selective schools, and an evolving and competitive job market post-graduation, more families are starting to raise the question of Return on Investment (ROI).
The stratospheric cost of elite private schools is, in part, a reflection of the perceived value of graduating from a prestigious college. ROI-based lists like the WSJ/College Pulse 2025 Best College rankings offer a different perspective. Parents can now compare and evaluate the value of a college education by how well it sets students up for financial success after they graduate. In other words, prestige isn’t everything.
With that in mind, maybe it’s time to look more closely at what actually constitutes a “good” college and what a successful college experience looks like. Is it four years of rewarding intellectual inquiry—or knowing you will have a high-paying job opportunity at the end? Or both?
Bloomberg kicked off the ROI trend in April with the article “If You Didn’t Get Into an Ivy League School, a Public School is the Better Investment.” The report notes that most applicants who don’t get a spot at an Ivy are inclined to choose an elite private college (the so-called ‘Hidden Ivies’) and according to recent research, some of these schools “underperform” on the ROI analysis.
[If you’re interested in learning more, the Georgetown Center on Education and the Workforce ranked 4,500 colleges and universities by ROI. If you type in the name of the college, you can see the Net Present Value over the next four decades and the Earnings Price Return on your investment.]
Pitchbook also released its annual university rankings, sorted by the number of alumni entrepreneurs who have raised venture capital in the last decade. In their rankings, you can explore the top schools that produce the most future founders, including female founders.
Value Beyond ROI
Many of CEW’s highest-ranked universities (based on the 40-year Net Present Value) are those that specialize in conferring degrees for lucrative fields like health care, engineering, or business. But what about the many thousands of students who are interested in fields other than these?
Despite the relatively lower ROI scores of many private colleges, these schools often offer significant benefits, including quality of faculty and curriculum, abundant resources, and strong alumni networks. Many private colleges also offer prestigious pre-professional clubs, and although joining them is often highly competitive, students say the experience prepares them for jobs in banking, private equity or consulting.
Colleges, it seems, are trying to find their way through this landscape, too—recognizing that companies want to hire graduates with strong analytical and technical skills and responding by introducing more programs offering skills-related courses and training.
Here are just a few examples:
California leads the way—not just Stanford, Berkeley, and the UC system, but also Harvey Mudd and Claremont McKenna, which are among the surprise winners rounding out CEW’s list of 20 schools with the best ROIs.
Babson has long been a top choice for many families with its mandatory “Foundations of Management and Entrepreneurship” class and other experiential programs.
Bentley began offering a Finance and Technology (FinTech) major last year, which features classes that prepare students to apply AI tools in financial environments.
So what’s a student to do?
I’ve written about the shortcomings of rankings before and my view remains the same: that the criteria on which rankings are predicated are fundamentally flawed—and, most disappointingly, not tailored to the diverse interests of applicants.
Just remember: neither the arcane categories used in U.S. News (like 'average alumni giving') nor Pitchbook’s perspective on top schools for founders tell you what life is actually like on campus, whether the students are happy, or if you will enjoy the classes. So we encourage all students to think about what matters to you.
For many of you, this is exactly the question that college itself will help you answer. But now is the time to start thinking about it.
*”Because man cannot live on bread alone”—for students interested in becoming playwrights, directors, designers, and composers, here is Playbill’s list of top colleges for Broadway Creatives from the 2023-24 Broadway season.