The 25 Colleges Offering the Highest Return on Your Investment

It’s valid to wonder whether college is worth it at all—but the answer might depend on what college you’re talking about.

In 2019, the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce published an extensive report that ranked 4500 colleges and universities according to return on investment [PDF]. Researchers used data on tuition and postgraduate salaries from the U.S. Department of Education’s College Scorecard to determine the worth of a degree 10, 15, 20, 30, and 40 years after enrollment.

The metric they went with for return on investment is “net present value” (NPV), which, per the report, is “how much a sum of money in the future is valued today costs, future earnings, and the length of time it would take to invest and earn a certain amount of money over a fixed horizon.”

To them, the 40-year mark is the most accurate measure of worth, so that’s what we went with in the table below. The top 25 is a more eclectic mix than a garden-variety list of best colleges and universities. You’ve got your Yales and your Harvards, sure, but there are also a number of more trade-specific institutions. The top three, for example, are all pharmacy schools: Albany College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences, St. Louis College of Pharmacy, and Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences. There are also a handful of maritime academies and, unsurprisingly, several tech institutes.

See the top 25 below, and explore the full report here, which also lets you filter for various factors. (You can, for example, choose to only see four-year or two-year schools, private or public schools, or only schools in, say, Ohio. There’s also a search function so you don’t have to scroll to find your own institution.)

Ranking	School	Location	40-Year NPV
1.	Albany College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences	Albany, New York	$2,722,000
2.	St. Louis College of Pharmacy	St. Louis, Missouri	$2,714,000
3.	Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences	Boston, Massachusetts	$2,421,000
4.	Massachusetts Institute of Technology	Cambridge, Massachusetts	$2,273,000
5.	Stanford University	Stanford, California	$2,068,000
6.	Maine Maritime Academy	Castine, Maine	$2,043,000
7.	Babson College	Wellesley, Massachusetts	$1,985,000
8.	Harvard University	Cambridge, Massachusetts	$1,967,000
9.	Georgetown University	Washington, D.C.	$1,950,000
10.	United States Merchant Marine Academy	Kings Point, New York	$1,949,000
11.	University of the Sciences	Philadelphia, Pennsylvania	$1,928,000
12.	Massachusetts Maritime Academy	Buzzards Bay, Massachusetts	$1,869,000
13.	Harvey Mudd College	Claremont, California	$1,851,000
14.	Stevens Institute of Technology	Hoboken, New Jersey	$1,833,000
15.	University of Pennsylvania	Philadelphia, Pennsylvania	$1,832,000
16.	California State University Maritime Academy	Vallejo, California	$1,818,000
17.	California Institute of Technology	Pasadena, California	$1,810,000
18.	Colorado School of Mines	Golden, Colorado	$1,794,000
19.	Bentley University	Waltham, Massachusetts	$1,786,000
20.	Yale University	New Haven, Connecticut	$1,777,000
21.	Columbia University	New York City, New York	$1,769,000
22.	SUNY Maritime College	New York City, New York	$1,761,000
23.	Duke University	Durham, North Carolina	$1,754,000
24.	Carnegie Mellon University	Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania	$1,750,000
25.	Georgia Institute of Technology	Atlanta, Georgia	$1,729,000

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