The Value of Education, Economically

Payscale.com recently ranked U.S. colleges based on return on investment (ROI) over high school graduates, that is how much more college graduates earn than high school graduates on average over a span of thirty years minus the cost for college attendance.

The figures are calculated with voluntary reports from graduates who did not seek post-graduate education, and they extrapolate from the past. If a school has recently changed its offerings profoundly, the numbers may be misleading. The ROIs are adjusted for length of study, drop-out rate and inflation. Costs for interest accrued on student loans are not included.

Payscale.com's list is ranked by thirty-year net ROI. The top ten exclusively consist of private institutions of higher learning. Prestigious engineering schools are in the lead. This is not surprising, because engineers seek post-graduate degrees less frequently than graduates with other majors and draw high salaries. Ivy League members constitute half of this group.

More intriguing, however, is the ranking by annual ROI (table below). This number represents the average return per year as percentage of the cost of college attendance. Only one private school can be found among the top ten of this list. The rest are public schools. In-state students garner the best return for their investment. Taking the high cost of student loans for private institutions into consideration, good public schools undoubtedly offer the best deal economically.

Colleges Worth Your Investment - Top Ten by Annual ROI

School Name	School Type	Average Cost for College & *Fed. Loan Debt in '09 [$]	30 Year ROI [2010 $]	Rank	Annual ROI [%]	Rank
Georgia Institute of Technology	Public (In-State)	79,140.-   *16,210.-	1,111,000.-	31	14.2	1
Brigham Young University	Private	58,450.-   *12,278.-	797,000.-	77	14.1	2
University of Virginia	Public (In-State)	74,410.-   *24,582.-	1,038,000.-	38	14.1	3
College of William and Mary	Public (In-State)	74,720.-   *22,755.-	895,000.-	51	13.6	4
Colorado School of Mines	Public (In-State)	95,740.-   *15,856.-	1,132,000.-	27	13.6	5
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University	Public (In-State)	83,270.-   *15,660.-	854,300.-	62	13.1	6
University of Michigan	Public (In-State)	84,690.-   *20,458.-	875,400.-	58	13.1	7
University of California at Los Angeles	Public (In-State)	94,100.-   *21,277.-	961,200.-	47	13.1	8
University of California, Berkeley	Public (In-State)	118,900.-   *17,054.-	1,223,000.-	16	13.1	9
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill	Public (In-State)	61,830.-   *23,125.-	615,100.-	149	13.0	10

*On Aug. 25, 2010, I added the median federal debt loads of graduates entering repayment during the last fiscal year that the U.S. Department of Education recently released (see Jett Wells and Leah Finnegan's article for The Huffington Post with the title "The Best Colleges In America .. And The Amount Of Debt They Leave Students In (PHOTOS)" dated Aug. 20, 2010). The complete list in xls-format can be downloaded here. In comparison with the debt loads listed in the table above, graduates from some renowned private not-for-profit universities and colleges may owe less than $10,000.-, e.g. Williams College, Harvard University, and Princeton University, whereas graduates from others owe more than $30,000.-, e.g. University of Pennsylvania, Vanderbilt University, and Emory University. The debt may be low at some private not-for-profit institutions, because their students may qualify less for federal loans and receive more institutional financial aid. Conversely, greater debt means less aid and/or higher cost. According to Tamar Lewin's post in The New York Times with the title "Average College Debt Rose to $24,000 in 2009" published online Oct. 21, 2010, half the schools listed above leave their graduates with near average debt.

Addenda

• State prepaid college tuition and fees plans, also known as 529 college savings plans, are designed to pay towards tomorrow's college tuition and fees at today's price, plus provide a tax rebate. Considering the steep rise of tuitions and fees at public schools in the past decade alone, the plans seem a sensible choice for parents to keep their children's student loan debt low. However, as Jessica Toonkel and Jilian Mincer report in their post with the title "Prepaid college plans: shrinking options, rising risks" published online on Reuters today, some plans have lost on investments, are underfunded and may fall short in their promises, despite legislative guaranties. Regardless, the Virginia529 College Saving Plan appears to be one of the safest, providing an additional benefit to students at the University of Virginia, the College of William & Mary and other institutions of higher learning in this state (01/11/2012).
• Alan Silverleib and Tom Cohen, report a new higher education initiative of the Obama administration aimed at improving outcome in their article with the title "Obama unveils plan to control college costs" published online on CNN today. The President announced the reform at the University of Michigan, which is on the top ten list above. Hopefully, this overhaul will benefit students at good public schools (01/27/2012).

• Stephanie Simon reports in her post with the title "U.S. college ratings game set for shakeup" published online on Reuters yesterday that the recent scandal surrounding falsely reported SAT scores at Claremont McKenna College, a the prestigious private college on the West Coast, may deeply affect how institutions of higher learning are judged in this country (02/04/2012).
• Jack Hough's insights in his article with the title "'Investing' in College? It Pays to Think Like an Investor" published online by The Wall Street Journal yesterday are well in tune with the thoughts in my post (05/05/2011).
• Based on a student survey conducted by ratemyprofessors.com, Robert Franek, Laura Braswell and the staff of The Princeton Review compiled a list of the 300 best professors at US institutions of higher learning along with professor and school profiles. The list was published in softcover by Random House this year and is quite informative. For example, Harvard University (private; annual tuition: $34,976.-) contributes two professors to the list. By contrast, The College of William and Mary (public; in-state tuition: $13,132.-; out-of-state tuition: $35,409.-) is home to ten such professors (05/23/12).
• Anna Prior and Matthew Heimer's article with the title "Which colleges help grads snare top salaries?" published online by marketwatch.com yesterday completely affirms the basic conclusion of my post that good public schools deliver most bang for the buck (09/26/2012).

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Neurolaw & The Mind

NPR News broadcast three in-depth installments narrated by Barbara Bradley Hagerty in the past three days about the latest findings on the genetic and neural underpinnings of criminal behavior and how these insights may influence sentencing in court.

The product of the gene MAOA discussed in the first installment entitled "A Neuroscientist Uncovers A Dark Secret" is the enzyme monoamine oxidase A. This enzyme breaks down the neurotransmitters dopamine, noradrenaline and serotonin. Modifications of this gene have been associated with an elevated risk for criminality (Guo and others, 2008). Persistently increased levels of dopamine may result in volatile, aggressive behavior. The research discussed in the NPR broadcast was conducted with the principal investigator's own family members and awaits publication in a peer-reviewed scientific journal. The identification of a large number of genes associated with mental disorders like autism may serve as a reminder that it is unlikely that the defect of only one gene may cause a behavior that is the result of multiple complex nerve cell interactions in the brain.

The second installment entitled "Inside A Psychopath's Brain: The Sentencing Debate" reports on evidence obtained with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) that convicted psychopaths viewing scenes with content needing moral judgment show abnormal activation of cerebral cortex. The principal investigator recently co-authored a study of similar design in which read statements were used instead of visual scenes (Harenski and others, 2010).

The identification of genes with gene chip analysis as well as the identification of activated brain regions with fMRI that may play a role in criminality are probabilistic with attached uncertainties. The third NPR News installment entitled "Can Your Genes Make You Murder?" informs us about the impact of the science discussed in the prior installments on a recent court decision in the state of Tennessee as an example of the advent of neurolaw, that is the inclusion of neuroscience in criminal law.

As intriguing as the scientific observations on the workings of the criminal brain may be, the science remains in its infancy. Examining the brains of convicted felons does not permit us to determine whether the detected changes are the result or the cause of the criminal behavior. A genetic modification statistically associated with criminal behavior may point to a potential hazard. Yet, only the committed crime provides the necessary affirmation.

Therefore, judgment in court will remain based on the offenders' decisions and actions. The difficulty of our judgment is brought into focus, however, when we are confronted with people who are perfectly able to make informed decisions and know right from wrong in every-day life, but who commit the most horrible crimes when the conditions are right with a good chance of repeating such crimes in a similar situation.

Are psychopathic offenders capable of repentance? Will incarceration improve them? Is it possible to 'cure' their affliction or will they forever remain too dangerous to be allowed to live among us unsupervised again?

These questions are as old as mankind. Whether neuroscience will help us find better answers remains to be seen.

I expressed my ambivalent feeling towards neurolaw in a poem when the term evolved into a buzz word. The poem is written in magic ink. The writing takes some time to unfold:

References

• Guo G, Ou XM, Roettger M, Shih JC (2008) The VNTR 2 repeat in MAOA and delinquent behavior in adolescence and young adulthood: associations and MAOA promoter activity. Eur J Hum Genet 16: 626-634.
• Harenski CL, Antonenko O, Shane MS, Kiehl KA (2010) A functional imaging investigation of moral deliberation and moral intuition. Neuroimage 49: 2707-2716.

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The Oil Spill in the Gulf & Prof. Grzimek

Today, government scientists have once more revised upward to 35,000 - 60,000 barrels a day their estimate of the rate of oil released into the Gulf of Mexico from the BP deep well that blew out in a disastrous explosion off the Louisiana coast two months ago (Stephen Power, John Kell and Siobhan Hughes, "BP, Oil Industry Take Fire at Hearing", The Wall Street Journal; Justin Gillis, "Estimates of Oil Flow Jump Higher", The New York Times). The incident has become the largest oil spill that this country has experienced to date. Gigantic clouds of dispersed oil lurk deep under the surface of the Gulf. No one knows where the oil will show. Blobs of oil have washed onshore in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and the Northwestern beaches of Florida. Fragile marshes are drenched in oil. Wildlife is suffering. Businesses in fishery and tourism are severely affected. The impact of the catastrophe cannot yet be estimated.

The oil spill and its consequences reminded me of the wise words of the eminent German zoo director, conservationist and co-founder of the Serengeti National Park Bernhard Grzimek. He wrote in his bestseller "Serengeti Shall Not Die":

“Large cities continue to proliferate. In the coming decades and centuries, men will not travel to view marvels of engineering, but they will leave the dusty towns in order to behold the last places on earth where God’s creatures are peacefully living. Countries which have preserved such places will be envied by other nations and visited by streams of tourists. There is a difference between wild animals living a natural life and famous buildings. Palaces can be rebuilt if they are destroyed in wartime, but once the wild animals of the Serengeti are exterminated no power on earth can bring them back.”

Bernhard Klemens Maria Grzimek was born Apr. 24, 1909. He studied veterinary medicine at the University of Leibzig and Humboldt University, Berlin, where he received his doctorate in 1933. In 1945, he was appointed to the post of director at the Frankfurt Zoo, which he helped rebuild and transform into one of the most formidable zoological gardens. He continued to hold the directorship until his retirement and served as president of the Frankfurt Zoological Society for more than four decades. He passed away shortly before his 78^th birthday on Mar. 13, 1987.

In addition to writing books on African wildlife, he compiled a comprehensive multi-volumed encyclopedia on animals and their habitat entitled "Grzimek's Animal Life Encyclopdia" and co-edited with the Nobel Prize-laureate Konrad Lorenz the ethological journal "Das Tier".

For decades, Prof. Grzimek hosted a popular weekly TV program in Germany that captivated an audience of millions. He brought live animals to the show and built the storyline around the special guest of that evening. I vividly remember him hosting a chimpanzee, opening our minds to the minds of one of our closest relatives.

Prof. Grzimek's was an outstanding fundraiser. Because of his effort, the Frankfurt Zoo accomplished to build excellent primate facilities. As a student, I spent quite a few hours there, and my observations would prepare me for later experiences.

In addition to his work for the zoo, Prof. Grzimek was deeply passionate about preserving the habitat of animals living on sub-Saharan grasslands. He raised substantial funds for the Serengeti National Park through his books, documentaries and TV program. His son Micheal died in an airplane crash on a mission to survey animal migration there. Father and son are commemorated with a monument on the rim of the park's Ngoro-Ngoro Crater. Watching the environmental catastrophe unfold in the Gulf, we should remember this man's wise words. They apply to the Serengeti as much as to the Gulf.

 

Courtesy SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images

Addendum

• This New York Times video by Jeffrey Gettleman and Sven Torfinn with the title "Highway Across the Serengeti" posted online today presents supporters and opponents of the highway project and shows the venue (10/30/10):

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