r/VirginiaNews

Prospective Virginia college students and their families now have access to additional data to help evaluate four-year degree programs: return on investment (ROI).

Earlier this year, the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia released a new data dashboard to show the average lifetime earnings of graduates from public institutions across the commonwealth compared to earnings for those without a degree.

The calculation attempts to determine whether specific majors are “worth it” from a financial standpoint, and whether students were able to pay off their student loans and earn more than a Virginia high school graduate does on average by the time they turn 67. It uses nearly 25 years’ worth of historical earnings data ending in 2019–20 (adjusted for inflation to 2023 values) for the calculations.

Last July, SCHEV members requested a model for measuring the return on investment of individual majors at public institutions. Tod Massa, policy analytics director for SCHEV, said he and others developed the model in-house and vetted it with economists in Virginia, and across the nation.

The highest-return degree at every public four-year university was either computer engineering, computer science or computer and information sciences. On the flip side, the lowest-ROI degrees at most schools were in the visual or performing arts, particularly those related to drama.

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