Columbia has been ranked as one of the best value colleges in America
Is anyone really surprised?
TIME Money have recently released their annual ranking of the best value for money colleges in America. According to their analysis, Columbia holds the #21 spot for best bang for your buck when it comes to where to go for college.
TIME.com takes a new, more analytical approach to assessing the landscape of US universities. Rather than scoring schools based on reputation, prestige, or "Ivy Status", MONEY's rankings focus on three indicators: graduation rate, financial stability, and peer quality.
Time takes into consideration the median SAT and ACT scores of students, along with general affordability by measuring the value of the investments from a financial perspective and accounting for average student debt and net cost of a degree. MONEY also takes into account affordability for low income students.
Finally, the ranked outcomes encompass graduate earnings, earnings adjusted by major, and socio-economic mobility index. This last feature appears to be a great indicator for the value a school brings its students, because it measures the school's ability to facilitate prosperous futures for those previously financially disadvantaged.
Despite not cracking the top 20, Columbia still ranks highly with a $62,500 average early career earning, strong SAT/ACT scores, and a seemingly low average student cost of $19,100 post-grants. And when all is said and done, Columbia still stands among the nation's finest institutions.
While all ranking systems differ in certain regards, TIME.com's rankings appear to shed some bias with regards to prestige by putting affordability and strength of educational programs at the forefront. In an article designed to explain its ranking system, TIME.com admits that while the rankings are not perfect, their system can "give students and parents a much better indication of which colleges will provide real value for their tuition dollars".
You can the rest of the rankings below: