Name: Salary Plays a Big Role in WSJ/College Pulse 2024 Rankings
Uploaded: 2023-09-07T19:28:00Z
Duration: 9 min
Description: The Wall Street Journal/College Pulse 2024 rankings measure several higher-education categories including graduation rates, students’ salaries after graduation, and the length of time it takes someone to pay off the full cost of attendance. Host J.R. Whalen speaks with WSJ’s Chastity Pratt, Harry Carr and Tom Corrigan about the findings. Photo: Dominick Reuter/Reuters

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The Wall Street Journal/College Pulse 2024 rankings measure several higher-education categories including graduation rates, students’ salaries after graduation, and the length of time it takes someone to pay off the full cost of attendance. Host J.R. Whalen speaks with WSJ’s Chastity Pratt, Harry Carr and Tom Corrigan about the findings. Photo: Dominick Reuter/Reuters

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Salary Plays a Big Role in WSJ/College Pulse 2024 Rankings

Here's Your Money Briefing for Thursday, September 7th. I'm J R Whalen for the Wall Street Journal. The Wall Street Journal teamed up with College Pulse and Statista to sort through volumes of data and rank schools according to some of the most important criteria that students and families consider when choosing higher education. So let's dive into the results. We're joined by WSJ Education Bureau Chief Chastity Pratt, as well as Rankings Editor Harry Carr and Reporter Tom Corrigan. So Chastity, the Journal's been assembling these rankings for many years. What's different about how you did it this time around?

Well, we know, everyone knows, that competition to get into college right now is crazy. That student debt is messy. And families are really trying to figure out what do we do? How do we do it? Which school is best for my kid, for my family, for our income, and how much we can pay for schools? And so what we've done this year is we've taken a look at the way we ranked schools, and we've changed the data that we're really helping people to understand. So we are more looking at outcomes rather than inputs. We're not looking at how much of a great reputation a school has had since they were founded in the 1800's or anything like that. We're looking really at the things that families think about when they go to school. Is my kid gonna graduate? Are they gonna get a good salary? The outcomes.

So the key thing here is this, we're doing much more to measure the value that colleges are adding for their students. And in terms of salaries, in terms of boosting their chances of graduating from the college. It's the colleges which are doing the most for their students in terms of those outcomes which are gonna do the best in our ranking this year.

So Chastity, were you surprised by any of the results that came from the new approach?

There are some surprises there. We're used to seeing the prestigious schools, the Ivys or the Ivy adjacent schools, do well in every single category in a lot of different rankings, and even in our rankings in the past. But now that we're measuring things differently, there are some smaller schools, some liberal arts schools, some public schools and private schools that are really doing well by their students. And in some cases, they're doing better than schools that we would've expected to be dominant in some categories.

Princeton comes at the top. There's a lot of the usual suspects make up the top 10. But there are a pattern you can see in the types of colleges which are doing very well out in our ranking. Some of those are particularly around STEM-related subjects and business oriented schools. So Babson College, which focuses very much on entrepreneurship, get into the top 10. New Jersey Institute of Technology do very well. Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology are in the top 20 and haven't been at that end of of the rankings for us before.

We also found that several small liberal arts colleges, those were Amherst, Claremont McKenna and Swarthmore, performed really well in the rankings. These are very small schools. They have fewer than 2000 students. But if you look at enrollments at the top medical schools and law schools in the country, they punch well above their weight. Amherst was eighth, Claremont McKenna was ninth and Swarthmore was 11th.

Harry, tell me about how you factored in a student's salary after graduation and how that played into the results.

So, that's a big part of what we're doing. It's not all of it. We do also have a big survey looking at the learning environment, which I think we'll talk about in a bit. But this is obviously Your Money Briefing, and money is a big part of why people go to college. It's a gigantic investment for students, and they want to make sure that they're getting the biggest bang for their buck. And what we're doing is looking at what we think those students at a given college would go onto and what the college is actually contributing for those students. Again, it's the value that the college is adding for those students that we're measuring. Not just their success, but the contribution of the college to that success.

And Tom, in many cases, a student's ability to attend a college depends on not only cost, but the availability of financial aid. What did you learn from the data about that?

Well, one of the student outcomes that Chastity and Harry have mentioned that we looked at is years to pay off net price, which is a figure that tells us how quickly can a student pay for the cost of college using the salary bump that they get from attending that particular college. And in that calculation, we use net price, which factors in grants and other types of financial aid. So we're looking at the number that the student and their family pays less financial aid. Generally a lower net price leads to a bump in the rankings.

Harry, you mentioned a school's learning environment. That was the second biggest component in the ranking. What do we mean when we talk about learning environment, and why is it such an important factor?

So we measured this with one of the largest surveys of verified college students in the US that, as far as we're aware, has ever been conducted. So we conducted interviews with more than 60,000 students across the US. And what we asked them was about their satisfaction with and the frequency of the opportunities they got to talk to their tutors, the type of learning experiences they got, the kind of learning facilities that they were being taught in, the preparation for their career that they were given by their college. All of that was factored in alongside those student outcomes. And we think that the best colleges not only are providing those bigger salaries at the end of the day, and also in the view of their students, are the best places to learn.

And Tom, the data also includes a school's graduation rate, but also how the school prepares students for their career after graduation. Why is that important?

Well, we measure that by looking at the salaries after graduation. And so, it's something that we emphasize in the rankings, but it's something that I also heard over and over again from the students and the parents that I've talked to while reporting out the stories that were published along with the rankings. The top of their mind is what kind of job and what kind of salary they'll have when they graduate. And I found in particular, that the schools that are at the top of our list are doing a really good job of matching and connecting students with alumni, many of whom are already at the top of their respective fields.

So Chastity, all this information is obviously valuable to students and their families if they're trying to map out a plan for college. But why is this information also important to the schools themselves?

This information is always helpful to the universities. Typically, what you'll see, especially in those schools that are ranked high, and in this instance, schools that are getting high scores in the student surveys, they're gonna use this for marketing. They're gonna use this to say look at us. We're great. We're at the top of the Wall Street Journal post-college rankings. It's instructional for families, but honestly, it is something that the colleges look at as something that can help them to attract students. So yeah, there's multiple advantages for everyone involved.

Chasity, where can people find these rankings, and how will it help them in making a selection about where to go to college?

The rankings are right there at wsj.com. And here's the thing, J R, this is helpful, useful information for families. So when you look at the Wall Street Journal Pulse College rankings, a student will know exactly what they're gonna get for their money. And not only that, we're doing this extensive student survey. The students who have gone to these colleges tell you what it's like after having attended while they're there. What's the best party school? What do I feel about the community and the social life there? Would I choose this again? Would I tell my friends to come to this college? So it's really a wide-eyed view of the college from top to bottom and what you're gonna get. And you know, we've not done it like this before. No one else has, and I think it's gonna be great for our families and for our students.

Our thanks to WSJ Education Bureau Chief Chastity Pratt, as well as Rankings Editor Harry Carr, and Rankings Reporter Tom Corrigan. And that's it for Your Money Briefing. Today's show is produced by Ariana Aspuru, with Deputy Editor Chris Zinsli. Our supervising producer is Melanie Roy. I'm J R Whalen for the Wall Street Journal. We'll be back tomorrow morning. Thanks for listening.

WSJ's Your Money Briefing podcast is your personal-finance and career checklist. Finance reporters and experts break down complicated money questions every weekday to help you make better decisions about managing your money. 