UW–Platteville ranks among the top of Wisconsin’s four-year public and private colleges and universities when it comes to return on investment.
AffordableCollegesOnline.org, a resource for college affordability and financial information, placed UW-Platteville fourth on the list of 29 Wisconsin schools with the greatest lifetime return on investment.
According to the report, graduates from these schools enjoy the largest earnings gap between non-degree holders over a 30-year span.
“These are important lists for prospective students to consider,” said ACO founder Dan Schuessler. “We’ve sifted through comprehensive data sources to find colleges and universities in Wisconsin that offer a high quality education with consistent, long-term payoffs in the workplace.”
“This report solidifies what we are doing; offering a high-quality education at an affordable price, that will pay dividends for years to come for those who earn a degree here,” said Dennis J. Shields, UW–Platteville chancellor. “When our students enter the workforce they will see immediate returns on their investment.”
ACO developed the following criteria for consideration as a “High ROI College,” including a fully-accredited institution, either public or private, a four-year, degree-granting institution and ROI according to PayScale’s 2013 College Value Report.
ACO compiled a list of schools meeting the criteria by using from:
• National Center for Education Statistics-the primary federal entity for collecting and analyzing data related to education. It provides consistent, reliable, complete and accurate indicators of education status and trends.
• The Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System- — the primary federal source for data on colleges, universities, and technical and vocational postsecondary schools in the U.S.
• Carnegie Classification, a framework widely used in the study of higher education, both as a way to represent and control for institutional differences, and also in the design of research studies to ensure adequate representation of sampled institutions, students or faculty.
• Payscale.com, a salary data collection organization.
AffordableCollegesOnline.org provides prospective college students and their parents with information and resources to help them manage the cost of obtaining an education.
The three colleges ranked higher than UW–Platteville were Milwaukee School of Engineering, UW–Madison and Marquette University in Milwaukee.
The rankings are available at www.affordablecollegesonline.org/online-colleges/wisconsin/.
