These Are the 10 Most Overpriced Elite US Universities Based on Cost and Starting Salary
Written by
Vance Cariaga
Edited by
Amber Barkley
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Getting a college diploma can make a huge difference in the amount of money you earn — a previous GOBankingRates article found that a bachelor’s degree could add an extra $1.5 million in income over the course of a career vs. only a high school degree. But college educations don’t come cheap.
The Cost of a Degree
The average cost of college in the U.S. is $38,270 per student per year, according to the Education Data Initiative. That total includes tuition, living costs, books and other expenses. For private, non-profit schools, the average is $58,628 per year.
If you want to go to an elite university, you can expect to pay even more. The typical cost to attend an Ivy League school ranges between $86,366 a year (Harvard University) and $93,417 a year (Columbia University), according to an analysis from the Ivy Coach website.
Return on Investment
The financial pain of paying high costs can be eased if you get a good return on your college investment. This can be measured in many ways, not all of which have to do with money.
But if you are concerned about the financial payoff, then one way to determine the worth of a college degree is to gauge how much income you can expect to earn from it — and how that compares to similar universities. This was the focus of a recent study from Edumentors, a U.K.-based provider of tutoring services.
Edumentors compared tuition and living costs to employment rates and starting salaries at the world’s top universities to try and get a clear picture of what students “truly pay for” and what they get in return. The idea was to determine which elite universities are the most overpriced based on overall costs to go there and starting salaries once you graduate.
For its study, Edumentors looked at 46 elite universities on four continents — including 14 U.S. schools.
According to that research, the most overpriced elite college in the United States is Northwestern University. Students there can expect to pay nearly $116,000 a year in overall costs and graduate with a median starting salary of $61,100 a year. This means the overall annual cost is about 1.89 times higher than the median starting salary.
Here’s a look at the 10 most overpriced elite universities in the U.S., according to Edumentors.
| College | Overall Cost (Including Tuition and Other Costs) | Median Starting Salary of Grads | Difference Between Overall Cost/Median Starting Salary |
|---|---|---|---|
| Northwestern University | $115,719/year | $61,100/year | 1.8939 |
| Columbia University | $97,003 | $55,190 | 1.7576 |
| Cornell University | $92,150 | $55,813 | 1.6510 |
| University of California, Berkeley | $73,828 | $47,473 | 1.5552 |
| Brown University | $91,676 | $61,400 | 1.4931 |
| Boston University | $87,122 | $75,518 | 1.1537 |
| University of Chicago | $77,800 | $75,200 | 1.0346 |
| New York University | $87,448 | $84,653 | 1.0330 |
| Duke University | $89,326 | $88,200 | 1.0128 |
| University of Pennsylvania | $92,288 | $92,500 | 0.9977 |
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