Party versus "sober" schools: Which grads do better?
Do graduates of the nation's biggest party schools earn more money over their careers? Or do students who choose to attend "stone-cold sober" colleges fare better in the job market?
That's the question salary comparison site PayScale sought to resolve in its annual report on which colleges produce the greatest return on investment (ROI) for their graduates.
And perhaps surprisingly, Payscale determined that party school grads enjoy a higher ROI for their bachelor's degrees during the first 20 years of their careers than their peers at campuses where partying and drinking are taboo. The average ROI for graduates of schools that made the Princeton Review's list of the top party schools was $354,400 over a 20-year period, versus $336,000 for the dry campuses.
Among the party schools that PayScale looked at were Syracuse University, University of Iowa, University of California-Santa Barbara, Penn State, University of Florida and University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Six of the top 10 party schools on the Princeton Review's latest list are so-called flagship schools in their state.
Brigham Young University, a Mormon institution in Utah, has had a lock for many years as Princeton Review's pick as the No. 1 sober school. Most of the schools in this category are religious institutions such as Illinois' Wheaton College and Michigan's Calvin College, along with West Point, the Naval Academy and Coast Guard Academy.
In important ways, of course, the earnings power of the students who go to these very different types of institutions isn't all that significant. The difference likely has less to do with the number of hangovers students experience as undergrads than the type of students attracted to party schools and, in particular, to flagship universities.
Flagships are the premiere public institutions in their states, and they tend to attract and accept students with better grade point averages and standardized test scores. Students with higher academic profiles tend to be more affluent because they've enjoyed academic advantages in their lives that other teenagers haven't. It's also a reality that standardized test scores are highly correlated with income.
Among the 14 school categories that PayScale reviews, graduates of the party schools enjoyed the third-largest ROI over two decades.
Engineering schools generated the biggest ROI among all college categories. The average ROI for engineering schools was $677,500, while Ivy League schools ranked second at $649,900.
Just like last year, Harvey Mudd College, a private liberal arts/engineering college in Southern California, enjoyed the No. 1 ROI among all the colleges and universities examined. Eight of the top 10 institutions with the highest ROIs had a large percentage of their students graduate with engineering degrees.
These schools included such well-known names as Cal Tech, MIT, Georgia Tech and Stanford, as well as Stevens Institute of Technology, Colorado School of Mines, Kettering University, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, and Missouri University of Science and Technology.
