College ROI: Published Results and a Personal Cost Comparison

A college can have strong published earnings outcomes and still be a poor financial choice for a particular applicant. The useful question is how its program, your aid offer and your likely time to graduate compare with the alternatives you can actually attend.

Use published research to identify schools worth investigating, then compare actual offers over the same period. Keep the institutional measure, personal cost calculation, and assumed earnings difference in separate columns.

Six colleges with published ROI results

Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce publishes a college ROI data tool. The six examples below use its 2021–22 rows, expressed in 2023 dollars, and show how the result changes with the time horizon.

Institution	10-year ROI	20-year ROI	40-year ROI
MIT	$579,000	$1,881,000	$4,484,000
Harvey Mudd College	$476,000	$1,819,000	$4,506,000
Caltech	$627,000	$1,719,000	$3,903,000
Georgia Tech, main campus	$407,000	$1,417,000	$3,437,000
Colorado School of Mines	$314,000	$1,318,000	$3,328,000
SUNY Maritime College	$340,000	$1,257,000	$3,092,000

The ordering changes with the horizon: Caltech leads these examples at 10 years, MIT at 20 and Harvey Mudd at 40. Choosing the largest number without first choosing the question would give you three different answers.

How Georgetown calculates the measure

The 2025 report’s methodology counts earnings after enrollment minus estimated attendance costs. It assumes five years of attendance for predominantly bachelor’s institutions, uses average net price, holds real earnings constant after year 10 and does not discount future earnings. Debt financing costs are excluded.

The underlying institutional earnings cover federal-aid recipients, including noncompleters. Public-college net prices reflect in-state students. The calculation does not subtract a no-college earnings path.

Read the figure as modeled earnings after enrollment minus attendance costs, using the report’s population and assumptions. For a choice between two offers, substitute your own net prices and compare the incremental cost and income between those alternatives.

Record the publication year, source-data year, and dollar basis beside each figure. That keeps a historical college comparison separate from the costs and earnings assumptions for a student starting in fall 2027.

A national earnings benchmark, with its limits

For 2025, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports these outcomes for adults age 25 and older:

Highest educational attainment	Median weekly earnings, full-time wage and salary workers	Unemployment rate
High school diploma	$966	4.3%
Some college, no degree	$1,062	3.8%
Associate’s degree	$1,135	3.0%
Bachelor’s degree	$1,578	2.8%

These annual estimates exclude October because data were not collected during the federal shutdown. They are 11-month averages, not strictly comparable with other annual averages.

These figures compare working adults age 25 and older across education levels. Use them as broad career context, then research the intended occupation and location for a graduate starting out. Experience and field differ across the groups.

Build the cost comparison before the salary forecast

Create one column for each actual offer. Separate tuition and fees, housing and food, books, transportation, insurance and personal expenses. Subtract grants and scholarships. Keep loans and expected student earnings in a separate financing section: borrowing changes when you pay, not the price.

Then write down the conditions attached to the offer. A scholarship renewable for four years only while maintaining a particular GPA deserves a different scenario from an unconditional award. A tuition-only scholarship leaves housing and other expenses to fund. A resident tuition estimate is useful only if you qualify for that classification.

Use the school’s net price calculator before applying and its written aid offer after admission. Our financial aid guide explains how grants, work-study and loans fit together.

For the worked example, assume College A costs $18,000 annually after grants and College B costs $30,000. Four years at unchanged prices gives $72,000 versus $120,000, a $48,000 additional cost for B.

Before forecasting a salary advantage, ask what that additional expenditure buys: access to the intended major, a required clinical placement, a shorter commute, a program unavailable at A, or something else you can identify.

Work through an explicit break-even example

Continue the hypothetical example. Assume B produces $6,000 more annual take-home income than A after graduation. Ignore interest, price changes and the time value of money for this first calculation.

The simple break-even point is:

$48,000 additional cost ÷ $6,000 annual additional take-home income = 8 working years.

Test how the assumed earnings difference changes the result:

Assumed annual take-home advantage from B	Simple time to recover $48,000
$0	No financial break-even
$3,000	16 years
$6,000	8 years
$12,000	4 years

The table identifies how much additional income would be needed to recover B’s extra cost. Budget using an outcome you could sustain: if B is affordable only with the $12,000 earnings advantage, investigate a lower-cost offer or additional grants.

For a more complete spreadsheet, place costs and income differences in the years they occur. Discount each year’s difference by dividing it by (1 + chosen discount rate) raised to that year. Use the same rate and inflation treatment for both options. A later dollar then carries less weight than an immediate dollar when the rate is positive.

Include time to completion and the alternative path

Suppose College B also requires an extra semester costing $15,000 after aid. If that delay replaces six months of work that would have brought $24,000 in take-home income, the additional difference becomes $48,000 + $15,000 + $24,000 = $87,000 under these hypothetical assumptions.

At the same assumed $6,000 annual advantage, the simple recovery time becomes 14.5 years. A single scheduling difference can therefore change this model more than a modest change in the advertised tuition.

Use a degree map to examine prerequisite chains, courses offered only once a year, later admission to the major, and transfer-credit decisions. Check that the proposed schedule reaches the intended degree within the costed period.

If comparing college with full-time employment, include the earnings you would forgo while studying. Compare living expenses consistently: you would need food and housing on either path, so do not charge all ordinary living costs to college while assigning zero living costs to employment. Include the difference between the alternatives.

Use the result to choose a workable shortlist

For each school, keep a one-page record of the intended degree, admission route to the major, expected graduation date, annual net cost, renewal conditions and financing plan. Put the source and measurement year beside every earnings figure.

Match the outcome definition across schools: university-wide earnings several years after entry, for example, or starting base salary among responding graduates in a particular degree. Use specialized institutions’ results for fields that match your intended study.

Choose options that remain workable under a less favorable scenario: reduced scholarship aid, one extra semester or lower initial earnings. Published ROI can help locate promising schools; an offer-specific comparison tells you whether their costs fit your circumstances.

Sources

• Georgetown CEW: interactive ROI table — selected 2021–22 rows, figures in 2023 dollars.
• Georgetown CEW: Ranking 4,600 Colleges by ROI, methodology and FAQs — 2025 edition.
• BLS: Education pays, 2025 — published September 2026.

Published figures checked November 2, 2026. The worked cost and break-even model uses the stated hypothetical inputs.