Report: CSU, UC offer students good economic returns for a reasonable price

On November 23, 2016, the Public Policy Institute of California reported that “The US government’s yearly scorecard shows CSU, UC offer students good economic returns for a reasonable price.”  Here’s an excerpt:

The [US Department of Education’s yearly] scorecard also highlights 26 affordable universities with good outcomes in the form of relatively high earnings. California’s public universities do quite well: eight California State University (CSU) and University of California (UC) campuses make the list. This list uses a school’s average net price (its tuition, fees, room, board, and other expenses minus the average amount of grants and scholarships) and the typical student’s earnings 10 years after enrolling to estimate how much “bang for their buck” students get in terms of future income.

In fact, almost all CSU and UC campuses provide higher-than-average incomes given their net price when compared to four-year colleges nationwide. … California also likely benefits from high-quality institutions. Most UCs are highly ranked nationally, and as PPIC has shown in other research, CSUs have relatively good six-year graduation rates when compared to similar institutions. This is important, as the scorecard reports the incomes of students who attended a university, regardless of whether they graduated. College graduates tend to make more than non-graduates, so institutions with better graduation rates are more likely to produce workers with higher incomes.

Read the blog post, “CSU and UC Are a Better Value Than Universities Nationwide,” on the PPIC website.