FREOPP.org'sCollege ROI Tool
Don't commit to a college or major until checking it on this chart! It helps you understand the expected return on investment based on students who graduated from that school with that major.
The Foundation on Research for Equal Opportunity (FREOPP) has compiled data from several different research organizations as well as their own to calculate the return on investment (ROI) for more than 53,000 undergraduate, associate, certificate, and graduate programs. As a result, a student can now look up a major at any given school to see what they can expect to make (on average) based on what other students who have graduated from that school with that major are making. This data helps students decide whether a program is worth their investment or if there might be other programs that would be a better investment.
FREOPP's study found that twenty-three percent of bachelor's degrees have a negative return on investment. This means that graduates from these programs, on average, earn less over their lifetimes than individuals with only a high school diploma. This takes into account the cost of tuition and the opportunity cost of spending four years in school. However, they also found that thirteen percent of bachelor's degrees have greater than one million dollars or more return on investment, assuming on-time graduation. FREOPPs has created a free tool to allow you to search through the data to help your student make an informed decision on the program that is best for them.
We recommend starting out by just searching for the "Field of Study" your student is considering. They might not currently be considering going out of state. However, they might start once they see how big of an impact it could have on the rest of their life. If they are determined to stay in state, they could filter by both field of study and state. We would also highly recommend searching by creditial type, as FREOPP.org found that many trade school programs are more lucrative than a large number of bachelor degree programs.
To see the full FREOPP.org analysis, you can find it here. To see the FREOPP.org methodology, you can find it here. And two other great resources to use to corroborate the data about majors from different colleges and income are Collegescorecard.ed.gov and Payscale.com.
