Which Local Colleges Give Students the Best Financial Return?

Which college or university gives students the most bang for their buck?

The Economist took its first stab at college rankings, listing the top 50 in the country that deliver the greatest financial return for students. Six Massachusetts institutions — Babson College, Harvard University, Bentley University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, College of the Holy Cross and Western New England University — made the top-50 list.

The Economist relied on a Sept. 12 college scorecard released by America’s Department of Education, studying students’ financial situations when they entered the school and 10 years after graduating.

“The government generated the numbers by matching individuals’ student-loan applications to their subsequent tax returns, making it possible to compare pupils’ qualifications and demographic characteristics when they entered college with their salaries 10 years later,” wrote the Economist. “That information offers the potential to disentangle student merit from university contributions, and thus to determine which colleges deliver the greatest return and why.”

In its rankings, The Economist took what a college graduate from each university was expected to make, and compared it to the median earned income graduates actually earn. Babson graduates, for example, can expect to make just more than $65,000 a year 10 years after graduation. The study found the median income from graduates 10 years later is actually more than $85,000, the plus-$20,000 rating accounting for the college’s No. 2 national rank. Harvard followed at No. 4, with a plus-$13,000 rating ($87,000 annual median income for graduates).

The upper income tiers, The Economist reported, were dominated by engineering-focused institutions that attract those with high SAT scores, while those who ranked lower were religious and art-focused colleges.

Data is available on 1,275 institutions, many of which aren’t fond of national college rankings, the Economist reports.

“Among the well-founded criticisms of these popular league tables is that they do not measure how much universities help their students, but rather what type of students choose to attend each college,” the publication states.

View the list, and the detailed explanation of how the rankings were attained, here.