We Calculated Return on Investment for 14,000 Graduate Degrees. Find Yours.
Look up the financial value of tens of thousands of graduate degrees.
Published in
2 min readFeb 24, 2022
There is an updated version of this data dashboard. You can find the new version here.
Our paper Is Graduate School Worth It? A Comprehensive Return on Investment Analysis calculates estimated earnings and lifetime return-on-investment (ROI) for nearly 14,000 master’s and advanced degree programs across America. Browse the table below to find earnings and ROI data for your degree.
Click here to open the table in a new tab.
Definitions
- Earnings at Graduation: Estimated median earnings of program graduates who received federal financial aid, during the first two years after completing their degrees.
- Earnings at Age 45: Estimated median earnings of program graduates who received federal financial aid, at the age of 45.
- ROI (Before Completion Adjustment): The amount that a student can expect to see his or her earnings increase thanks to the graduate degree, subtracting the direct and indirect costs of graduate school, and assuming a 100% chance of degree completion.
- ROI (After Completion Adjustment): The amount that a student can expect to see his or her earnings increase thanks to the graduate degree, subtracting the direct and indirect costs of graduate school and accounting for the risk that the student will drop out before finishing the program.
- ROI (Adjusting for Completion and Underlying Spending): The amount that a student can expect to see his or her earnings increase thanks to the graduate degree, subtracting the full underlying cost of graduate school before subsidies, and accounting for the risk that the student will drop out before finishing the program.
Read more about how we calculated ROI in the full paper and the methodology.
Click here to download the full ROI dataset for graduate degrees. Journalists and researchers are encouraged to make use of the data. Please attribute to the Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity.
