College rankings get to bottom line

A recent report caused a stir by ranking U.S. colleges based on how much their alumni earn, calculating in cold, hard cash the return on educational investment. The University of Hawaii, for one, cried foul, with a vice chancellor asserting that how much recent graduates earn was no way to accurately measure the quality and outcomes of higher education.

Of the Hawaii colleges included in the report, Hawaii Pacific University ranked best for return on investment, at No. 306, followed by UH-Manoa at No. 467 and Chaminade at No. 729.

The analysis by Payscale.com, a salary and compensation information service based in Seattle, included data from 1.4 million college graduates nationwide, who were alumni of 1,016 private or public institutions.

Some of the criticism about the report is valid. It’s no surprise, for example, that alumni of a private math, science and engineering school such as Harvey Mudd College, which ranked No. 1, would earn more than the average student coming out of the comprehensive public institution Central Connecticut State University, ranked No. 367. Delve deeper into the data, though, and it’s clear that education majors from Central Connecticut State do pretty well; the school ranked first for return on investment for that major. The report’s sub-rankings by major — math, computer science, English, psychology and the like — make it especially useful to prospective students and their tuition-paying parents.

What students earn after graduation is, of course, due to many factors besides where they went to school: what they studied, where they are living, their own goals and how hard they work all count, too, to name just a few of the variables. Still, data analyses like Payscale’s, as incomplete as it may be, are welcome and long overdue.

Higher education is the great equalizer, the path to a better life and the foundation of a functioning democracy. It’s also a major financial investment and, too often these days, a burdensome debt for students and their families. The average tuition at a four-year public university has increased more than 250 percent over the past three decades; the average college student graduates with $26,000 in loans.

Amid this landscape, it’s only natural that families are looking for bottom-line information about how many students at a particular college actually graduate, whether they get jobs when they do, and, yes, how much they earn as young alumni and later in their careers. These questions do not devalue the ideal of intellectual pursuit, but simply tip the balance of information in favor of the educational consumer.

And, for what it’s worth, despite UH’s middling ranking, the report did reveal the value of a bachelor’s degree from Hawaii’s largest university. Manoa graduates on average earned $73,000 a year after 10 years in their respective fields, topping Honolulu’s median household income of $71,263 and nearly reaching — with a single earner — Hawaii’s average family income of $78,757, according to Census data.

It still pays to go to college, and educational institutions should welcome every opportunity to make that case to prospective students.