College ROI Unleashed: How to Land Your Dream Job (and a $75k+ Salary)

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College ROI Unleashed: How to Land Your Dream Job (and a $75k+ Salary)

Two Illinois Tech students work together in S. R. Crown Hall on the university's Mies Campus

What Do You Want From College?

Going to college is one of the most important decisions a person can make in their life: a years-long investment of time, energy, and money that will have a significant impact for decades to come. But why do most students go to college? What do they expect to get out of it? In short, what are their expected “outcomes”?

In a 2022 survey¹ of 1,000 current and prospective undergraduate and graduate students conducted by Best Colleges, a respected national academic media and research organization, students were asked simply, “Why is College Important?”

Popular answers included “pursuing my passion” and “discovering my purpose in life.” But two of the top three answers had a similar focus: “creating a better life for me or my family” (the top choice for 19 percent of respondents) and “improving my career or income prospects” (the top choice of 15 percent of respondents—with 45 percent of respondents placing it in their top three). For Black, Indigenous, and people of color students in particular, 33 percent also listed “enhancing social, cultural, or economic status” in their top three reasons as well.

It doesn’t take a sociology degree to recognize that getting a good job upon graduation is and likely always will be one of the top reasons students invest time, energy, and money into getting a higher education degree. So how do colleges rank with regard to this expected career “outcome”?

Updating the Ranking Systems

Prior to 2023, a majority of national ranking systems didn’t place career outcomes on the same level of importance that students do, shown by the results of that recent survey. Instead, these organizations focused their rankings on college wealth (Harvard University, for example, has a massive $49 billion endowment) and reputation among other academics. But some have recently started looking at what students say that they want, and ranking colleges by how much they’ve delivered.

In 2023 the Wall Street Journal teamed up with College Pulse and Statistica to rank colleges utilizing an “outcomes-focused” methodology. For the first time, the ranking organizations emphasized how much colleges improved their students’ chances of graduating on time, and how much they boosted the salaries students earned after graduation.

“We no longer reward colleges’ wealth or reputation in and of themselves,” the Wall Street Journal wrote². “Gone is the survey of academics on schools’ reputations. Gone are the rewards for instructional spending and the assumption that the quality of education is largely dictated by how expensive it is to produce."

Perhaps unsurprisingly, this change in methodology produced some massive shifts in the rankings.

For instance, Illinois Tech’s skyrocketed to #23 in the United States out of the 400 top colleges across the country, and #1 in Illinois⁴, joining the ranks of some of the most prestigious universities in the country. Illinois Tech is also ranked #2 in the Midwest.

Perhaps just as important, Illinois Tech ranked #16 in the country in “salary impact,”⁵ a metric that places schools “in order of their impact on graduates’ salaries and how this relates to the cost of attending the college.”

In addition to the Wall Street Journal survey, the U.S. News and World Report also recently made critical updates to its rankings methodology, placing additional emphasis on student outcomes, graduation rates, and earnings. Their 2024 rankings⁶ subsequently placed Illinois Tech at #12 in the country for earnings of graduates and #29 in the nation on its Best Value Schools list.

The Hard Numbers

It’s not hard to see why a university such as Illinois Tech saw such improvement in their rankings: The vast majority of Illinois Tech graduates obtained full-time employment or decided to continue their education through graduate studies. ^{7, 8}

When it comes to salaries, Illinois Tech graduates have distinguished themselves: the university’s 2022 graduates reported a mean starting salary of $75,352 for undergraduates, well above the national average of $60,028, and $87,258 for graduates.

A Historical Emphasis at Illinois Tech

Illinois Tech’s founding mission⁹ was to create a school where students of all backgrounds could prepare for meaningful roles in a changing industrial society. It began by offering professional courses in engineering, chemistry, architecture, and library science: professions that would propel graduates to high-earning careers that were of the utmost importance at the time.

That mission hasn’t changed. In addition to the recognition mentioned above, Bloomberg Philanthropies recently recognized Illinois Tech as one of 28 American Talent Initiative Higher-Fliers—institutions with high graduation rates that are also leaders in college access and in enabling success for lower-income students.

If you’d like to learn more about the opportunities at Illinois Tech, please contact their Office of Admission for more information.

What Do You Want From College?

Updating the Ranking Systems

The Hard Numbers

A Historical Emphasis at Illinois Tech

Learn more...