THE ECONOMIST, Great Britain's once-great liberal (in the classic sense) magazine, now too liberal (in the bad old modern sense), has ranked U.S. colleges and universities by a clever metric -- how much money graduates earn ten years out compared with their expected earnings based on SAT scores and such. Texas scored one university in the top ten and one in the bottom ten.
The winner -- right up there with Washington & Lee, Villanova, and Harvard is . . .
. . . Texas A&M International University, seventh-ranked on the scorecard, with an expected ten-year-out salary of $33,600 versus the actual number, $45,200.
Never heard of it? Me neither. Here's how The Economist describes it:
Perhaps the most useful piece of data in the scorecard, however, is the list of institutions that life disadvantaged students into the middle class. Many of them funnel graduates into union-friendly public-sector jobs. For example, Texas A&M International sits on the Mexican border in Laredo, America's third-poorest metropolitan area. Its students are 90% Hispanic, and have bottom-tier SAT scores. Nonetheless, its listed median earnings are $45,000 a year -- slightly above the national average, and precisely equal to the current first-year salary for teachers in the local district, a frequent employer of the college's graduates.
Scratch the part about "union-friendly." This is Texas, after all. But the ranking is otherwise fascinating and encouraging. (_____, "Where's best? The value of university," The Economist, October 31, 2015)
Now for the loser. One hint: Teeth are gnashing on South Main.
Our own William Marsh Rice University ranks sixth from bottom. The chart shows expected earnings ten years out of $69,700, but actual earnings of only $59,900, for a negative 9.8 percent.
On its face, this dismal rank is surprising. The Economist says "colleges packed with engineers and computer scientists tend to have unusually rich graduates. Is that not Rice?
Maybe not. The school made its chops as a factory for engineers, but recent decades have seen major shifts toward the softer social sciences and other liberal arts mainstays.
The scorecard says the big winners, as a class, were colleges of pharmacy and maritime colleges, "which train engineers for careers in the navy, shipping and energy."
Comments