How much can a Brown graduate expect to earn? In a tough economy, that question rests on many students’ and parents’ minds.
According to an annual survey that PayScale released last week, Brown graduates have the eighth-highest average income after graduating among alums of U.S. colleges.
The University ranked 17th in last year’s PayScale rankings. Among its Ivy League peers, only Princeton and Harvard outperformed the University.
For its survey, PayScale compared approximately 1,000 American colleges and universities on a complex data set.
According to the rankings, the average Brown graduate earns a $52,300 starting salary, and average mid-career salaries stand at $119,000. In response to the survey question, “Does your work make the world a better place?” 51 percent of alumni surveyed answered affirmatively.
In contrast to typical college rankings, PayScale aims to calculate the financial outcomes on college education, including earning potential and the 30-year average return on investment.
The PayScale rankings are unique in that “it’s the only data we currently have that attempts to find out how much graduates earn,” said Mark Schneider, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and a member of PayScale’s advisory board.
“A school like Brown, which is more liberal arts-(oriented), does well because of the quality of its students,” Schneider said, adding that humanities majors at most other schools do not earn similarly high salaries.
The PayScale rankings have proven popular, Schneider said, attributing this to students’ angst about the state of economy.
But some students expressed skepticism about the importance of the rankings and their significance for the University.
“Most thinking adults realize that these ranking studies really are hogwash,” said Sohum Chatterjee ’14.
Emma Funk ’16 said the high rankings do not console her. “A statistic like that doesn’t convince us that we won’t end up being unemployed or underemployed,” Funk said. “The fear or perception of the economy not doing well is still prevalent. … I don’t think that data makes us any more relaxed about our employment prospects.”
For other students, Brown’s high ranking contradicted their perceptions of where graduates commonly work.
“I was under the impression that a large majority of Brown graduates go into nonprofit organizations or more community-related jobs than profit-earning ones,” Jack Du ’16 said.
Schneider said PayScale’s data set raised questions about how to best analyze the numbers.
“How do you combine disparate measures into a similar ranking?” Schneider said. “How do you compare a state university to Brown? How do you develop a category for comparison?”
PayScale’s methodology did not include alums with advanced degrees and only used data from graduates with bachelor’s degrees. It also excluded self-employed and contract employees.
Because the salaries of graduates from elite schools vary extensively, the study has a relatively wide margin of error, the report stated.
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