Your Lot and Parcel

Can Trade Schools Be More Lucrative Than Attending College?

August 05, 2024 Benjamin Diaz/Preston Cooper, Writer for The Foundation For Research on Equal Opportunity

Is college worth it? As his comprehensive research shows, the framing of the question is wrong. The decision to attend college is less important than the choices that come next: which school to attend and which subject to study he says.

He speaks to the report that assesses the economic value of 53,000 degree and certificate programs at thousands of colleges nationwide. The key measure of economic value is "return on investment" (ROI), defined as the amount that a student can expect to gain, financially, for having pursued a college degree. ROI compares the main financial benefit of college — the increase in lifetime income attributable to the degree — to the costs, including tuition and foregone earnings while enrolled. The preferred measure of ROI also accounts for the risk that a student could fail to complete college.

The estimates of ROI in this report improve on existing estimates of ROI in several ways. He calculates ROI at the program level, meaning he can report results for individual majors at each college rather than the college overall. He also crafts estimate of earnings throughout students’ careers, instead of focusing merely on the first few years after graduation. The methodology also provides more accurate estimates of the increase in earnings attributable to each degree by adjusting for demographics, socioeconomic status, academic ability, and local labor markets.


https://freopp.org/does-college-pay-off-a comprehensive-return-on-investment-analysis-563b9cb6ddc5

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