Is your school worth the investment? Compare four-year cost against the lifetime earnings premium for 6,243 U.S. colleges, using federal earnings and net-price data.
Across 6,243 US colleges, 10-year graduate earnings range from under $20,000 to over $140,000 a year. The return on a degree turns on which school you pick and what you pay, run any college below.
According to the U.S. Department of Education's College Scorecard.
6,243
colleges with earnings data
$50,232
high-school-only baseline / yr (BLS)
71%
of colleges earn below that HS baseline
$143,372
top value now - Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Why ROI varies so much
Where the high-school baseline falls among US colleges
10-year graduate earnings across every US college
Each bar is the number of colleges in that earnings band, the marker is the high-school-only baseline.
$50,232Top 29%higher than 71% of 5,103 US colleges
Each bar is a $20K-wide band; taller bars hold more US colleges. The dashed line + filled bar mark this entry. Hover or tap any bar for its full count, share, and where it sits relative to this entry.
Source U.S. Department of Education, College Scorecard · BLS · 2024
We compare the 4-year total cost of attendance (net price after financial aid, multiplied by 4 years) against the lifetime earnings premium, the difference between graduate median earnings and high school median earnings ($50,232/year, BLS 2025 annual average), weighted by the school's graduation rate, over your selected career length.
What is the payback period?▼
The payback period is how many years of post-graduation earnings it takes to recoup your total investment. A payback of 5 years means you break even 5 years after graduating. Shorter is better.
Why is completion rate included?▼
Not everyone who enrolls actually graduates. The completion rate weights the expected earnings: if a school has a 50% graduation rate, your expected earnings are a blend of graduate earnings and non-graduate earnings (high school median). This provides a more realistic ROI estimate.
According to the U.S. Department of Education College Scorecard, updated September 2024, this calculator draws its earnings and cost inputs from the same federal release PlainCollege uses for all 6,243 tracked postsecondary institutions. Earnings are median values 10 years after enrollment. High school baseline: Bureau of Labor Statistics median weekly earnings for workers 25+ with a high school diploma. See our methodology for how these figures are sourced and computed.
What this means for your numbers
The calculator uses net price after grants and scholarships, not sticker price - the two can differ by tens of thousands of dollars a year.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology currently ranks first on PlainCollege's best-value list, earnings minus net price.See the full best-value ranking →
Debt-to-earnings ratio - median debt divided by median first-year earnings - is a useful sanity check on affordability alongside the raw ROI figure.
This calculator is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice. Results are estimates based on historical national averages and do not predict any individual student's actual costs or earnings.
Every figure on PlainCollege is rendered directly from the U.S. Department of Education's
College Scorecard data, no number is typed in by an editor. ROI figures are computed directly from College Scorecard cost and earnings data, no number is typed in by an editor. See our
editorial standards & corrections policy, the
methodology behind these numbers, or
report a data error. Data current as of 2024-25.