Compensation data website PayScale recently ranked colleges based on the return students could receive on their tuition investment. In non-Wharton terms, the site looked at how much more money a Penn graduate earns than a high school grad and compared that number with the cost of attending Penn. The result: Penn grads receive on average an 11.8-percent return on their investment, and Penn was ranked 10th out of the over-850 colleges studied.
But we want to know: should we be surprised? Nobody questions that Penn is one of the top-ranking academic institutions in the world. Penn alumni are scholars, doctors, lawyers, entrepreneurs, Nobel-Prize winners and Olympic athletes. By comparison, the schools ranked in the top nine — just above Penn — include four Ivy League schools and three non-Ivy schools ranked among the top five national universities by U.S. News and World Report. It would seem that Penn is ranked exactly how we should expect.
That’s not to say this isn’t an achievement the University should be proud of. A higher salary is a mark of success, and we are happy to know that Penn grads are successful. It would also be both unfair and inaccurate to say that their Penn education was not a factor in these alumni’s financial success.
We merely encourage students to look beyond this ranking. A high salary is a mark of success, but it isn’t the only mark of success. Many successful Penn alumni enter into careers that don’t earn them obscene amounts of money. After all, Penn alumni are scholars, Nobel-Prize winners and Olympic athletes. We — as Penn students — look forward to gleaning much more than a large salary from our four years here.
