'Affordable Colleges Online' ranks UNE for student ROI
University of New England graduates enjoy one of the greatest lifetime returns on investment in Maine, according to Affordable Colleges Online, a website reporting on higher education affordability.
The website ranked UNE second in student ROI (return on investment) among 43 public and private colleges and universities in Maine, including four-year, degree-granting, fully accredited non-profit institutions.
Return on investment: ROI
According to investopedia.com, ROI is “A performance measure used to evaluate the efficiency of an investment or to compare the efficiency of a number of different investments. To calculate ROI, the benefit (return) of an investment is divided by the cost of the investment; the result is expressed as a percentage or a ratio.”
Net tuition prices and graduates’ average starting salaries and ROI calculation were key factors in the rankings. The ROI ranking utilized 30-year salary data from PayScale.com’s 2013 College Earnings Report.
The rankings were tabulated based on data provided by leading higher education sources:
- The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), the primary federal entity for collecting and analyzing data related to education, which provides accurate indicators of education status and trends;
- Integrated Post-Secondary Education Data System (IPEDS),the primary federal source for data on colleges, universities, and technical and vocational postsecondary schools in the United States;
- Carnegie Classification, the framework widely used in the study of higher education, both as a way to represent and control for institutional differences, and also in the design of research studies to ensure adequate representation of sampled institutions, students, or faculty; and
- Payscale.com, which provides career-related data on a national, state, local, and individual basis.
Student loan default rates, a measure of students who are unable to pay back their loans, is another key measure of a university’s return on investment. While the national student loan default rate is 13.4 percent and Maine’s is at 11.5 percent, UNE’s student default rate is just 3.3 percent.
Among the best
Again and again, industry experts have cited the value and return-on-investment (ROI) of a UNE degree. Forbes included us on its list of “America’s Top Colleges for 2014.” According to Payscale.com, we are ranked No. 1 in student ROI among public and private colleges and universities in Maine and in the top 15% nationally.
UNE programs enjoy national reputations for excellence
Whether you’re pursuing a graduate or professional degree in medicine, one of the allied health fields, the sciences, education, or any other discipline in which UNE specializes, you benefit from internationally renowned faculty, world-class facilities, and innovative programs that utilize the latest instructional methods and technologies.