I spend most of my time down at the other end of the cost spectrum but a few of these surprised me. Harvey Mudd? Who knew? Most Expensive Colleges 2012-2013 - Yahoo! Finance
CNBC ranks Harvey Mudd is #2 Graduate Money Maker. " 2. Harvey Mudd College Mid-career median salary: $135,000 Starting median salary: $66,800 Location: Claremont, Calif. College rank: 12 Acceptance rate: 22.3% Enrollment: 777 "
These "sticker prices" aren't meaningful, for two reasons. First, many of these expensive colleges are also quite wealthy, which means that they can afford to offer generous financial aid packages to the students they admit. Relatively few students (the wealthiest ones) actually pay the full sticker price. Second, many of these expensive colleges offer an education which is well worth a lot of money. The more meaningful statistic, in my opinion, is the "cohort default rate" -- i.e. the percentage of students who are in default on their federal student loans within three years after graduation. That number gives you some indication of the financial value that students are getting from their education, relative to the financial cost. The US Dept. of Education now requires all schools to post their CDR, which you can look up at the College Navigator site. For Harvey Mudd, the current (2009) CDR is 0.0 %. In other words, every single student who left Mudd in 2009, after borrowing taxpayer money to attend, is currently meeting their repayment obligations. For comparison, the sticker price at University of Phoenix is much lower than the sticker price at Mudd. But UoP's 2009 CDR is 26.4 %. In other words, more than 25% of students who left UoP in 2009, after borrowing taxpayer money to attend, have fallen behind on their student loan payments. So which school is the better deal -- both for students and for taxpayers ?
