Harvey Mudd Second in Nation for ROI

Harvey Mudd College ranked No. 2 in the nation for return on investment in PayScale’s 2017 College ROI Report, moving up from third place last year.
Prior to 2016, Harvey Mudd held the No. 1 spot for college ROI for four years straight, from 2012 to 2015.

With a 20-year net ROI of $962,000, Harvey Mudd came in just behind the United States Merchant Marine Academy. Taking third place was the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), followed by SUNY Maritime College, the Colorado School of Mines and California Institute of Technology (CalTech), respectively.

In a separate category, Harvey Mudd ranked No. 1 for “Best Value Colleges For Technology Careers,” followed by UC Berkeley, Stanford, Yale, MIT and CalTech.

While the College welcomes consistently high ROI rankings, Harvey Mudd’s mission remains to prepare leaders in science, math and engineering who understand the impact of their work on society, says Vice President for Admission and Financial Aid Thyra Briggs.

“We strive to provide an excellent math and science education in a broader liberal arts context. Our students not only gain extensive technical expertise, they also learn to work collaboratively across disciplines and communicate well,” Briggs said. “The combination of these skills makes them particularly valuable to employers and graduate schools.”

PayScale economists evaluated data from more than 1,422 colleges and universities and compared costs to median alumni earnings over a 20-year period by summing up the median pay for bachelor’s graduates who earned degrees between 1997 and 2016 from each school, using data over the last year to adjust for wage inflation.

In PayScale’s 2016–2017 College Salary Report, a separate annual report issued each fall, Harvey Mudd ranked No. 3 (in a tie with Princeton University) for mid-career salaries of all U.S. college and university graduates pursuing careers with a bachelor’s as a final degree. PayScale defines mid-career salaries as 10 or more years of experience in a field.