UF may be one of the country’s 50 most expensive schools for out-of-state students, but the cost of tuition is one of the best investments students can make, according to a ranking by Smart Money.
The Wall Street Journal Magazine of Personal Business ranked UF second in terms of return on investment for 2009 graduates at 50 of the most expensive public and private U.S. colleges. The ranking was compiled by comparing young professionals’ starting tuition and fees to their median salary.
The recent UF graduates reviewed from a salary database spent $73,476 on out-of-state tuition and fees over fours years and made a median salary of $46,200, earning 182 points on the magazine’s scale. Georgia Institute of Technology lead the ranking with 202 points.
Smart Money also compared the starting tuition and median salaries of midcareer graduates from the UF class of 1997. In that category, the graduates make a median of $80,800 a year now and spent $26,850 on starting tuition and fees.
Christina Rohan, a 28-year-old senior specializing in painting, said UF produces professionals in too many fields to declare one salary to represent all graduates, calling the $46,200 median salary “ambitious.”
“Maybe, if you’re an economics or business major, that might be a reasonable estimate,” she said.
And while Georgia Institute of Technology may seem like a more sound economic option for students, according to the rankings, it’s important to keep the lower cost of in-state tuition in mind, said economics professor Mark Rush. The ranking assumes students paid out-of-state tuition without financial aid.
“Even though they’re higher on the scale, you’re still better off in-state,” he said.
Steve Orlando, UF spokesman, said most UF undergraduate students paid in-state tuition and got financial aid.
“When you take those two things into account, it makes the picture brighter,” he said.
