> However, where college students were enrolled also mattered when it came to ROI. For example, an English degree from the University of Virginia has a $581,925 positive return on investment—climbing to over $600,000 when only including students who graduated on time. In contrast, students at Virginia Commonwealth University—another public university—who majored in English have a negative $30,000 ROI, with just a $3,624 benefit for those who end up graduating on time.
Getting a good (first) job is key for igniting upward progression, and, as they say, it is not what you know, it is who you know (maybe outside of college grads going straight to FAANG by grinding leetcode). Being unfamiliar with either institution, I'd suppose the former exposes one to a better network.
20 years ago, a kid I graduated with when I got my BS in business administration went straight to an $80/yr job through his network. I was not aware enough nor lucky enough to make a network and I barely broke $30k on my first job and it took ten years for me to make $80k, and that took me switching careers to software development, where I've double that a couple times.
UVA is a nationally ranked, well known school, with extremely selective admissions.
VCU is an average school. It has some very good programs, but overall, it’s in the second or third tier of public schools in VA (UVA, VT, W&M at the top, followed by JMU, GMU).
Really all this study tells me is college is too damn expensive.
Plus, the opportunities to double your salary or even get a +20% bump plateau pretty quickly. You might be able to do it early in your career, but let's say you're 15 years into your career making a great $200K/yr salary. You're not going to just suddenly find a company willing to pay you $400K/yr. My last job hop was for +0.5%. Even assuming an average year-on-year bump of 5% (taking into account job hops) is ridiculously optimistic.
The key is that first job. Compare someone whose first job pays $50k/yr to someone whose first job pays $80k/yr. Assuming both average that 5% compensation increase every year, their outcomes will be totally different. After 30 years, the first person will be making ~$200K/yr and the second one ~$1.2M/yr, and their lifetime earnings will be $3.3M/$12.6M respectively.
Getting a good (first) job is key for igniting upward progression, and, as they say, it is not what you know, it is who you know (maybe outside of college grads going straight to FAANG by grinding leetcode). Being unfamiliar with either institution, I'd suppose the former exposes one to a better network.
20 years ago, a kid I graduated with when I got my BS in business administration went straight to an $80/yr job through his network. I was not aware enough nor lucky enough to make a network and I barely broke $30k on my first job and it took ten years for me to make $80k, and that took me switching careers to software development, where I've double that a couple times.