Defined by Business Dictionary, a “Best Value” is “a tradeoff between price and performance that provides the greatest overall benefit under the specified selection criteria.” Which U.S. schools are the real “Best Values?” Let’s compare the lists from various media.[/vc_column_text][vc_message message_box_color=”blue”]Media used in the comparison table below are often quoted by most U.S. colleges and universities.
- Kaplinger’s Personal Finance
- Forbes Magazine
- U.S. News & World Report
- Money Magazine
The data table below shows U.S. schools which can produce the best values for their graduates
[supsystic-tables id=52]
Data Sources and Ranking Metrics:
- Publish Date: December 2016
- Source of Data: Peterson’s Undergraduate Database
- Ranking Metrics: Based on the median earnings of graduates at a particular college 10 years earlier and who received federal financial aid.
- Publish Date: March 2016
- Source of Data: Center for College Affordability and Productivity.
- Ranking Metrics: “based on tuition costs, school quality, graduation success rate and post-graduate earnings.” – Forbes Magazine
- Publish Date: September 2016
- Source of Data: U.S. News & World Report
- Ranking Metrics: based on both academic quality and cost at each national university. (Only the “Best Value” rankings for national universities are provided in this blog post.)
- Publish Date: July 2016
- Source of Data: various
- Ranking Metrics: judging colleges on 24 factors, “including widely accepted quality measures such as graduation rates, affordability measures such as how much students and parents have to borrow, and measures of alumni success such as how much recent graduates earn.” – Money Magazine