Inside Higher Ed: Data Show Strong Return on Investment for UNC Grads
Excerpt of article by Kathryn Palmer
Despite growing public skepticism about the value of college, the cost of obtaining a degree from any of the University of North Carolina System’s 16 universities is worth it, according to a study evaluating the financial outcomes of graduates of the system.
Graduates who complete an undergraduate degree at one of the UNC System’s universities have a median lifetime return on investment of $500,000 compared to North Carolinians without undergraduate degrees. And completing a degree resulted in upward economic mobility for nearly 90 percent of low-income students.
These are some of the highlights of the results of a study the system released earlier this month that examined return on investment between 2015 and 2020 for the 724 undergraduate programs and 575 graduate programs across the UNC System. The study also found that students who complete graduate degrees had a median lifetime return on investment of $938,000 compared to those with just a bachelor’s degree.
The North Carolina General Assembly commissioned and funded the study. Over the past year-and-a-half, Deloitte, a private research firm, worked with consulting firms rpk Group and The Burning Glass Institute to analyze decades of wage data for graduates living in-state to calculate the return on investment for each degree, which was defined as lifetime earnings minus the costs of obtaining the degree.