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Public Virginia Universities “Bang for the Buck”

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James A. Bacon
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Public Virginia universities bang for the buck
Public Virginia universities “bang for the buck.” Graphic credit: Cranky’s Blog

John Butcher has a clever — and comprehensible — way to calculate the educational “bang for the buck” delivered by Virginia’s public colleges and universities, taking into account the six-year graduation rate and the median income of former students receiving financial aid after 10 years. Check out Cranky’s Blog for the fine print on methodology.

The University of Virginia stands out, not just on the basis of grads’ high salaries (which one would expect given the fact that UVa is the most selective institution) but its high graduation rate. The graduation rate is a function of many things including the support given to students but also the socio-economic status of the student body. Even with generous financial aid, poorer students have a tougher time coming up with the scratch to stay in school. UVa takes in a low percentage of high-need Pell grant recipients.

Needless to say, this “bang for the buck” ranking is a rough cut. But it gets us a step closer to the holy grail of measuring return on educational investment so we can tell which institutions are adding the most educational value as opposed to getting the best results because they recruit the best students

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14 responses to “Public Virginia Universities “Bang for the Buck””

  1. Scott Surovell Avatar
    Scott Surovell

    I guess in societies that only value a man’s worth by how much they earn per year, that might be a useful metric.

    All that says to me is that UVA graduates people into higher earning professions and the leaves lower earning professions like teaching, nursing, music, arts, public administration, etc. to other schools. I’m not sure that’s much to be proud of and not really a useful metric unless as a society we value our humans by how much money they can earn.

    Aside from that the admissions at these schools are skewed from the outset. UVA has a much higher proportion of children from high net worth families which generally correlates strongly with academic and professional success for a variety of reasons.

    How about we just look to see if students are happy? On that score, JMU has all of them beat.

    http://thetab.com/us/jmu/2016/03/25/jmu-ranked-third-best-school-nation-students-2236

    1. James A. Bacon Avatar
      James A. Bacon

      Every point you make is valid. Before you can measure “bang for the buck” you really need to know what you want to measure. Post-graduation income is only one factor, and perhaps not the most important. But I would say this: How do we justify expending public dollars on higher ed if not for the fact that it creates a public good — an educated population is a productive population, and a productive population generates more (taxable) wealth.

    2. TooManyTaxes Avatar
      TooManyTaxes

      I agree with Scott Surovell that salary alone is not a good measurement. A better measurement is the number/percentage of graduates getting a job in their field within six months/one year of graduation. Students who go on to graduate or professional schools should be accounted for separately.

    3. CrazyJD Avatar
      CrazyJD

      I only wonder about 2 or 3 of the Scott’s statements.

      I would take issue with the sweeping generality in the first sentence, as well as the fallacy contained therein called the “all or nothing” fallacy. It is obviously not true that using money as a metric is only useful in a society that only values money. Can it not be a useful metric in a society that also values other things? Money and personal wealth are very valid stand-ins for general societal value because of the things money can generate that we might all consider valuable. Art, music come to mind. Beauty on any front and the ability to preserve it. Money also has the advantage of being readily measurable, unlike your metric of “happiness”, which is hard to define, let alone measure. Please let me know when you have discovered each.

      >>All that says to me is that UVA graduates people into higher earning professions and the leaves lower earning professions like teaching, nursing, music, arts, public administration, etc. to other schools. >>

      Could you tell us what your evidence is for this statement. I’m simply unaware that UVA makes a point of graduating people into higher earning professions.

      >>Aside from that the admissions at these schools are skewed from the outset. UVA has a much higher proportion of children from high net worth families which generally correlates strongly with academic and professional success for a variety of reasons. >>

      Are you saying that UVA purposely selects from high net worth families? There may be some truth contained in the second sentence, and you have hedged your way to a successful point by using the phrase “for a variety of reasons”

      I never knew a college admissions person who didn’t want to select from high net worth families. Such a policy tends to perpetuate the institution. He/she was generally prevented from doing so by political correctness. As far as I know, every “elite” college or university now makes more of a point of turning away the so-called privileged in favor of the so-called “disadvantaged”. And as far as I know, UVA follows this approach. But I stand to be corrected by others more knowledgeable than I about admissions at UVA. In any event, “lesser” colleges don’t have the luxury of turning away real paying customers. Can you say Sweetbriar?

      1. Scott Surovell Avatar
        Scott Surovell

        Crazy:

        I absolutely think UVA over-selects from high net worth families. I’ve seen UVA’s admissions’ data sorted by legislative district. The #1 district outside legislators with precincts around Charlottesville is whoever represents Great Falls. In fact, the Great Falls delegate (Barbara Comstock last time I saw the data) had 4x as many admissions as the kids from the 44th District I represent in Northern Virginia – which has a large number of free & reduced lunch families. The student populations tightly correlated with legislative districts with higher income populations.

        In fact, the last data set I saw there were over 400 current students from that one legislative district and less than 20 in about 4-5 others in Southside/Southwest Virginia. No other district was within 50 kids of the top one.

        Income is closed correlated with traditional academic success measures – GPA/SAT performance which is 80-90% of what admissions officers consider.

        As for programs, UVA has engineering and architecture schools. Most other in-state schools don’t. UVA has virtually zero focus on the arts – unlike VCU or JMU. How many highly paid recently graduated actors, musicians, artists or theatre technicians do you know?

        I haven’t pulled the data, but it’s pretty obviously if you are familiar with these schools’ programs.

        All of our higher education programs serve a purpose. Our community colleges are pumping out certified medical records transcriptionists, paralegals, cybersecurity specialists (with associates degrees), and retraining all kinds of workers who get offers right out of college. In fact, NOVA is the 20th largest university in the United States of America and isn’t even on this list.

        Virginia needs all kinds of people to do all kind of jobs. Not everyone can attend a four-year residential college or has expectations about making a huge pile of money. Focusing on earnings and graduation rates as a proxy for “value” to society is a very myopic approach.

  2. LarrytheG Avatar
    LarrytheG

    Well I LIKE metrics and at the same time agree with Surovell but you need the metrics to make an informed decision – for you – and that second part is up to you to define what things are important to you .

    But I think Cranky is re-creating the wheel – the oft-dissed Department of Education has already done what he did:

    https://collegescorecard.ed.gov/search/?state=VA&control=public&sort=advantage:desc

  3. Izzo Avatar
    Izzo

    If you include Virginia privates, you’ll see Washington and Lee graduates make an impressive $72,900 per year. That is 21% above UVA. And their net cost isn’t that much higher. W&L also came in tops in the rankings done by the Economist, which estimated economic value added by the institution.

    I suspect more information is needed on the effect of only including students receiving federal aid (I think the percentage is much lower at schools like UVA and W&M than at say ODU). Also, the numbers may be skewed by things like the degree and gender mix. Engineering graduates tend to make significantly more at least in the beginning. Some professions that you might assume are high earning (e.g. MD) haven’t kicked into high earning gear by 10 years out.

    Payscale did a similar ranking but uses data on all graduates. It is self reported, so use with a grain of salt again. For Virginia schools, W&L is once again tops. And second in Virginia is . . .VMI. Must be something in the water in Lexington.

  4. Izzo Avatar
    Izzo

    Note that the Economist rankings specifically attempted to estimate the value add — the difference between what the graduates actually make and what they might have made if they studied elsewhere. I add this because Jim is looking for “the holy grail of measuring return on educational investment so we can tell which institutions are adding the most educational value as opposed to getting the best results because they recruit the best students.”

  5. LarrytheG Avatar
    LarrytheG

    here’s W&L according to the Feds…

    https://collegescorecard.ed.gov/school/?234207-Washington-and-Lee-University

    you’re right about the 72K salary but the tuition is a pricey 24k

  6. Izzo Avatar
    Izzo

    So say vs UVA that would be $24K more cost over 4 years but earning $11,800 more per year (20% more) on an ongoing basis. It pays off in a reasonably short period of time in my view.

    Georgetown University did a study on the data adjusting for mix of majors (e.g. engineering schools have higher average salaries because engineers make more on average and they have lots of engineers). It also shows W&L way out in front in Virginia with $77,600 median (and $17,200 above projected earnings — JMU is the highest state school at $3,600 above projected). They must be doing something right at W&L. https://cew.georgetown.edu/cew-reports/college-rankings/

    Looking at the federal data, the most worrisome thing I took note of is only 68% of students nationwide are actively paying down their debt. That sounds like a ticking time bomb.

  7. LarrytheG Avatar
    LarrytheG

    Mea Culpa – drilling into Cranky’s blog and then further into his “data” – he’s using the Govt College Scorecard that I referenced!

    my bad!

    but then I’m not quite clear on what Cranky “added” of his own other than the “bang for the buck” ratio.

    And I find myself agreeing Mr. Surovell again:

    ” Virginia needs all kinds of people to do all kind of jobs. Not everyone can attend a four-year residential college or has expectations about making a huge pile of money. Focusing on earnings and graduation rates as a proxy for “value” to society is a very myopic approach.”

    Money is an important metric – no question but the bigger issue is people getting jobs and becoming taxpayers and not entitlement takers and not everyone is going to be able to achieve the higher academic levels – but most are more than capable of getting a decent K-12 education and getting a vocational certificate that gets them a job, earns them enough to take care of themselves and a family, pay taxes and not be an entitlement burden..

    so it seems like a lot of what we read here in BR either talks about how important it is for middle class kids to get low tuition to attend UVA and similar – and at the same time – a constant drumbeat about the myriad “failings” of low-income family, parents, kids, etc… such that they “can’t” achieve ..don’t deserve college loans cuz we know they’re gonna fail.. etc..

    so let’s repeat Mr. Surovell’s observation again : ” Virginia needs all kinds of people to do all kind of jobs. Not everyone can attend a four-year residential college or has expectations about making a huge pile of money. Focusing on earnings and graduation rates as a proxy for “value” to society is a very myopic approach.”

    However – I STILL LIKE the metrics – and point out that Cranky chose a subset of what DOE actually provided – which was complete and including public and private and 2 year institutions.

    we need to recognize that not everyone is going to be a “top earner” and that many, many people – just learning a skill and trade and getting a decent-paying full time job is in many respects a MUCH BIGGER BENEFIT to society that a much smaller group of people getting degrees from UVA …

    we seem to miss the forest for the trees sometimes.

  8. Izzo Avatar
    Izzo

    I agree that there should be more than what you make and that Cranky’s is pretty limited. Many would substitute some salary for a job that provides them more satisfaction or has “high meaning.” Payscale, asks these questions and includes it in their rankings along with earnings. For instance, 65% of graduates at Stanford rate their jobs as having high meaning vs 50% at UVA and W&L and 43% at Richmond. So they are 30% more likely to have jobs that they think have high meaning. The highest Virginia schools (William and Mary, Longwood, Radford) are in the mid 50s.

    The Economist is only focused on earnings, but in a valuable way. We know from earlier studies that high achieving students tend to do well wherever they go. The Economist answers how much better or worse they do at an institution rather than an alternative. This is how much value the institution itself adds. They have to control for a number of things, so the analysis goes way, way beyond what Cranky did. This is the one where W&L did great.

  9. LarrytheG Avatar
    LarrytheG

    A related issue is the fact that more than a few people do not get a sufficient K-12 education to actually succeed at college much less a rigorous path and this includes MORE than low income folks.. it includes folks in rural Virginia not only those just graduating but those who were blue collar – had one job at one factory or coal mine then it closed and their education is insufficient for a good job even if they move to where jobs are – they’ll end up doing minimum wage service work or menial labor.

    There are 10, 20 , 100 times more people like this than there are folks trying to figure out if they’ll make more money with a UVA degree or a Yale degree.

    the bigger problem for society is not how many folks can make a lot more money from a good college degree and “affordable” tuition – it’s about all the folks who are NOT pursuing a top-tier degree who need ENOUGH education to get a job – pay for their own needs, be a taxpayer and not an entitlement “taker”.

    I think the folks who are pursuing the high dollar salaries with top-tier degrees don’t need that much “help” in “deciding”.. compared to what needs to be done to get all the others enough education to earn a living.

    probably as important – is convincing the folks down a notch at college, is that just a generic college degree is not near as likely to get them a good job anymore… either.. its not much better than a blue-collar “education” in the 21st century job market.

    here’s what employers offering “good” jobs want , IN ADDITION to an “education”:

    key skills needed in today’s workplace: problem solving, analytical thinking, and the ability to work independently.

    STEM on the Job
    Most employers want workers who are able to reason and solve problems using some math, science, or technology knowledge. Key STEM skills include:

    Analytical skills to research a topic, develop a project plan and timeline, and draw conclusions from research results.

    Science skills to break down a complex scientific system into smaller parts, recognize cause and effect relationships, and defend opinions using facts.

    Mathematic skills for calculations and measurements.

    Attention to detail to follow a standard blueprint, record data accurately, or write instructions.

    Technical skills to troubleshoot the source of a problem, repair a machine or debug an operating system, and computer capabilities to stay current on appropriate software and equipment.

    soft skills

    Communication and cooperation skills to listen to customer needs or interact with project partners.

    Creative abilities to solve problems and develop new ideas.
    Leadership skills to lead projects or help customers.

    Organization skills to keep track of lots of different information.

    where are these skills “taught”? How are they documented, certified so that an employer knows and trusts the claimed skills?

  10. Izzo Avatar
    Izzo

    Back to the original post, I’d point out that W&L and W&M actually show higher middle 50% SAT and ACT scores than UVA according to the federal data (slightly for W&M and more so for W&L). UVA’s graduation rate is remarkably high, particularly for a fairly large state school.

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