Earlier this week, the United States Department of Education released a new website called College Scorecard, a site that gives the earnings of people who attended nearly every domestic college and University. College Scorecard is a product of the federal government’s attempts to inform people of expected earnings within a decade of graduation—when taking on the financial burden of secondary education, it is important to have a firm grasp on the returns of investment, especially when attending prestigious, private, and incredibly expensive institutions such as Boston College.
BC alumni who received federal financial aid are making a $67,000 salary ten years after graduating from BC, which represents an impressive return on investment compared to the $33,000 a semester of tuition. But, it is important to remember that College Scorecard is only dealing with those graduates who received financial aid during their time at BC, and that College Scorecard does not take major or school of study into account. Instead, the report combines the entire student body under one set of statistics. Many other schools, too, that got lower-than-expected scores are contesting the data, saying that the study’s information wasn’t collected in a statistically appropriate way.
Regardless, College Scorecard represents a noteworthy attempt by the federal government to increase transparency for people who are concerned financially when looking to apply for college. By developing a platform that makes it clear which institutions are helping the students in the long run, and which are failing, schools will be held more accountable for where their allotted federal financial aid is going. In turn, the cost of those universities and colleges that do not achieve a stipulated standard can be cut down, making education affordable proportionate to the expected returns after one graduates. BC is already doing well in this department, and the school deserves credit for that. With 67 percent of the student body receiving financial aid, that means a good chunk of the student body can be expected to be financially prosperous in the future.
Featured Image by Francisco Ruela / Heights Graphic
Many of the scorecard’s numbers are misleading. Most striking they are not comparing apples to apples: the high school grads, age 25 to 34, earning an average of $25,000 that they are basing their earning % on are all part of the full-time workforce. Yet the student data is based on all students that were on aid that attended the College; not just grads, and not those that paid full price for their education. It also includes alumni that are not currently working or are working part-time; including stay-at-home-mothers caring for their children, grad students, volunteers working for non-profits, etc. It is interesting that the government would do that here, but not include these non-working folks when they calculate national unemployment figures. A special note with regard to stay-at-home-mothers; why are they looking at their individual income rather than looking at their household’s income? Would the President say that we should not provide federal student loans to future mothers, who choose to stay home to raise their children? Maybe he thinks these women should not go to college because they are not personally going to make more than those with a high school education? Another section that strikes me as odd is under “Financial Aid & Debt”, the “Students Paying Down Their Debt” percentage; why not just include the alumni’s loan default rate? If someone is in grad school they most likely deferred their loan and will not make a payment on it in the first 3 years or
the same would be the case if they were part of the program that lets you defer your loans if you work for a underprivileged public school, so this “Students Paying Down Their Debt” figure seems useless, where the loan default rate would be much more telling. In general their website is either misleading or overly simplistic, without explaining much.