![Is College Still Worth It? [OC]](https://www.europesays.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/izdj3k9a59yf1-1920x1024.png)
All non-profit, 4-year US colleges and universities were included. Red dots are public schools, blue dots are private schools, size of each dot corresponds to undergraduate population. Both trend lines are LSRLs. Data is from 2023.
Posted by graphsarecool
41 comments
Source: [https://collegescorecard.ed.gov/data](https://collegescorecard.ed.gov/data) from US Dept. of Education College Scorecard, most recent institution data(2023). Tools: numpy, matplotlib, and scipy.
Would love to see one with college name labels, especially to see who the outliers are!
Although I wonder how this works when, for example, in a college with a good nursing program has a small percentage of graduates who skew their median, while churning out a lot of non-nurses who are all unemployed.
My read: only the most expensive private universities provide enough of the income boost to justify the cost of education in them. Meaning, in majority of the cases, public universities are a better option.
There are 100% some uncontrolled variables here which makes this data a lot less useful. For example, people who enrol in private colleges probably have generational wealth anyways, meaning they are more likely to have a higher income anyways. Reading this graph and not considering factors like that might lead to people making some incorrect conclusions.
I would say any undergraduate program with good vocational training located in a region where that industry is active, *might* be worth considering. I got a CS & Math degree and graduated in 2010 – it has opened many economic doors for me in life. It also only cost around $30,000 USD in 2010 dollars. ($44k today)
It probably took 8 years to pass the break even point economically, but now I’m miles ahead of where I’d likely be without the piece of paper. In summary, short term nah long term hell yea.
It would be nice to see the base line—income at 32 without a college degree. I think that’s about $42k. Also, a tricky issue here is scholarships. Many people, especially at private universities, don’t actually pay full tuition.
Whats the private university that seems better than public ones, is it Brigham Young?
Just eyeballing it, the trend line characterizing public universities seems way off. Given the dots presented, looks like the trend line should be much more vertical.
The implication of this is that spending more on public education doesn’t get you much in way of a return. Would be interesting to look at this broken down my major or occupation.
oh wow, sure is . . . the default chart settings from matplotlib
Gotta get the poor kids that go to top schools to take that lockheed martin job offer somehow.
Both of these trend lines look like terrible fits
Tuition is not a great independent variable because every university use pricing models that do not map cleanly onto tuition “sticker prics.” . For instance, fancy schools might advertise a very high tuition rate to *signal* their elite status to prospective students, but they also give out lots and lots of financial aid to basically every student, so the median price that students *actually* pay for 4 years of college is substantially lower.
I believe Duke does this, if not others. NPR’s *Planet Money* ran a story on it a few years back.
Does your career path goals require degree? Then yes, its worth it. I think if you are going into STEM its a great idea.
If you are going for something like philosophy, it is not worth it unless you have a career path in mind. In 2025 you can study philosophy relatively easily for free.
The title isn’t really what this graph is capturing. It’s not a question of income with a college degree vs. without, it’s “Is going to a college with high tuition vs. low tuition worth the extra cost?” And I guess the answer is yes, for private at least.
Interesting, but OP’s headline is misleading. This chart speaks more as to whether spending more on college is worth it than whether college itself is worth it. It provides no real data on that question.
This trend line might be related to location rather than college quality, with both salaries and tuition being driven up by high cost of living states, particularly when that is concentrated in VHCOL cities.
Start rich stay rich, that’s the message.
Tuition may only be a fraction of cost to attend… and then ROI may be a better function to compare against.
But a huge problem are what I call “boutique” majors and degrees that get hyped up for HS students making $100k commitments that really do not have commercial value.
I hate shit like this that leaves out a huge factor. Even the lowest paying white collar jobs tend to have a better quality of life then the middle level blue collar jobs. So even if someone is only making 60k a year it is better to do that answer phones then digging holes. Hour wise and life expectancy wise
This interestingly exposes the *real* thing people are paying for: to be initiated into “the network”.
That’s why private college students cluster into two very different groups: one that gets the benefit from “the network” because their parents are members, and the students who don’t and end up with the same salaries as public school students.
What is a “private college”? Don’t think we have those here in Canada unless it’s a for-profit a la DeVry??
Aaah US. Happy to be graduated with less than 300€ in tuition. Not per year. In total. Bachelor + master.
With a salary which is on par with the average of public US universities.
I think it’s just not worth it to be destroyed by the US high education racket.
TLDR: **Public Schools are a MUCH better VALUE than private schools.**
I think a distribution curve might serve to illustrate better the point here: Top college *can* lead to higher wages but the distribution of results is much much wider than for public colleges.
If I was to bet, I’d go for a public college. Yes, the max outcome is lower, but the grouping is much more interesting making it more of a “sure shot” to gain an advantage on the job market.
Would be easier to digest with typical degree _cost_ (sub-aggregated by major) which would include as other commenters rightly suggest discounts. Also this comparison doesn’t tell us if college is worth it, just that private college is probably not.
Seems like private ain’t worth it unless you are going to an elite private university.
This is an ugly chart. It is supposed to be beautiful.
Gotta find out which ones are those at the top. Also, seeing this data matched against tuition would be useful for determining value.
I’m curious why the data stops at 5k undergrads – many good private unis have fewer, especially STEM small private schools.
There’s a lot that makes this pointless and uninterpretable.
First off. The lack of plotting a non college data point means the titles just sounds like AI/human slop.
Secondly, as others have mentioned the tuition in no way reflects the cost of attendance for private or for public. Scholarships. Fees. Housing. All that good important a stuff.
I do give points for the clean presentation though. It’s a nice use of the tools. The underlying data is just useless at face value.
also i’ll say i’m doing pretty well now, but was in grad school exactly 10 years after graduation, so my income would have been on the very very bottom of this scale
As others are pointing out there are many contributing factors not represented here but just from the graph it shows investing an extra 60k earns you roughly 20k extra pa. So it pays for itself after just 3 years.
Do first 1.5-2 years at community college… saved me a lot of money. Those early years are pretty irrelevant anyways.
I like the graph, but there is one thing that is missing which is a baseline comparison group, namely those that didn’t go to college. Even the average line for those that didn’t go can help with the interpretation.
Short answer, hell no. Not for most.
That doesn’t mean most high school graduates should not at least consider it, and know what they are saying no to. If an affordable state college degree, is available in a field that has evergreen demand, then sure.
But those evergreen fields are continuously shrinking. Not even a CS degree is a guarantee anymore.
The best guarantee, if I was a 18 year-old graduating high school, I would go straight into trade school, learn how to be a plumber, electrician, HVAC tech, appliance tech … something that cannot be eliminated or encroached upon by AI.
Those fields and skills can also lead to a small business ownership in the future for those who have that ambition. And they’re portable anywhere in the country.
The more relevant question for this graph would be if paying more for college will result in a higher paying job, not if college is worth it at all (which is quite a vague question)
This graph doesn’t even remotely answer the title question. This answers if private college is worth it vs public (and it shows the answer is “yes” since the salary will pay off the tuition difference in a few years)
College at all would require a reference point for what non degree holders earn, which isn’t shown.
Ha , the Conservatives want yall to stay stupid. Take a trade and fix my sh*t. They don’t want you to grow a conscience in college
The means tell you a lot about the demographic that each school attacts on average. That information can be useful for some high-level planning in the higher-education space.
However, within a school there is a lot of variation in both variables, and it is not normally distributed. Therefore, this graph does not help inform individual students.
The graph does not show whether a school will be good for an individual student’s income potential.
The worst thing about this presentation is probably that it reinforces a particular pathology: people thinking that simply getting the credential that is a bachelors degree will award them a well paying job. Too many college graduates become disillusioned to learn that it is the education, that they failed to get, that makes them employable.
The things that do matter to making a college education result in higher income depends mostly on the interaction between what the college offers and what the student needs. An individual’s income will depend a great deal on whether their talents are in demand, and whether their education complemented their talents. Drive and resilience are a couple of those talents, and those are not major-dependent.
As to the question in the title, the graph shows nothing about whether the college education is worth it for the life fulfillment it provides. That is something people end up spending a lot of money to get because it is worth so much to them.
Is private college education worth more than public college. I fixed your title.
The question this is answering seems to be “Are Universities that charge a higher tuition worth it?” Absent any information about incomes for people with no college degree you can’t answer the question proposed in the title
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