America’s Best Bang for the Buck Colleges

So-called elite colleges and universities have been under the microscope for the last few years, and that has only intensified since campus protests at the onset of the war between Israel and Hamas garnered national attention. These institutions have been the subject of congressional hearings and constant media coverage, and they are unlikely to escape public scrutiny anytime soon.

But here at the Monthly, we aren’t laser focused on the Columbias and Harvards of the world, which serve a privileged few, but on the much broader group of colleges where the vast majority of students get their educations—and on how well all of them advance social mobility. After all, colleges receive hundreds of billions of dollars each year in subsidies from federal, state, and local government in addition to the tuition they charge. So students and taxpayers have a right to know how well those schools are fulfilling their mandate to make the American dream possible.  

In that spirit, we present our annual list of Best Bang for the Buck colleges in 2024—schools that do a good job helping students of modest means earn reasonably priced degrees that help them get economically ahead in life. The rankings are broken down by region. (We used the same data and methodology to create the social mobility portion of the main rankings; the methodology is explained here.) 

No university in America was more heavily criticized this year than Columbia for coming down too hard—or not hard enough—on the Gaza protesters and for being too wishy-washy—or too doctrinaire—in defending free speech. But let us offer a rare good word for the Morningside Heights institution: It does right by its non-wealthy students. Columbia undergrads from families earning less than $75,000 annually pay only $3,061 a year to attend (including living expenses) and are making $89,697 in annual income nine years after entering the university. Columbia clocks in at number four on our Best Bang for the Buck Northeast ranking this year. 

That said, Columbia doesn’t serve that many low- and moderate-income students—out of a graduating class of 2,200, only 432 receive Pell Grants. By contrast, CUNY’s John Jay College of Criminal Justice, number seven on our Northeast rankings, graduates 1,589 Pell students a year. Rutgers University–Newark, number 21, outranks Yale and Dartmouth, 27 and 35, respectively. And while Columbia’s low cost for non-wealthy students and high earnings are admirable, at the Massachusetts Maritime Academy, number five in our Northeast rankings, students face total charges of $8,072, and earn more than $77,000 per year nine years out. Even with an endowment of just $40 million, the Massachusetts Maritime Academy does not drop a heavy anchor of debt on students. 

Across all of the regions, some of America’s wealthiest and most selective colleges perform admirably. MIT, Princeton, Vanderbilt, Georgetown, Stanford, and Northwestern all rank within the top 10 in their respective regions. But if anyone can provide high-quality, affordable educations to students from lower- and middle-income families, it is them. Because of their vast endowments—the result of decades of recruiting students from affluent families who go on to earn big bucks and then gratefully donate some back to their alma maters while enjoying tax deductions—these elite schools can afford to be generous to the relatively few poor students they recruit. 

Much more credit should go to the regionally focused public and private universities on this list that consistently manage to do more with less. The California State University system always stands out for its top performance, as seven of the top nine and 13 of the top 20 universities in the West are from that system. Berea College and the University of Texas–Rio Grande Valley lead the way in the South and the University of Florida Online and Florida International University are tops in the Southeast. In the Midwest, Governors State University, Trine University, and the College of the Ozarks are some of the broad-access institutions that keep prices in check while generating strong outcomes.

The Best Bang for the Buck colleges in every region are a mix of a few highly selective, nationally renowned colleges and lots of not-so-famous ones that serve a broader range of students. The same is true of the worst Bang for the Buck colleges, which you can view on our website by scrolling to the bottom of the rankings. There, you’ll probably recognize the names of  schools in your local community—regional public universities, small liberal arts colleges, for-profit outfits—that charge students more than they should, graduate fewer than they could, and deliver degrees that aren’t worth much in the marketplace. 

But what should really set you off—it certainly does us—are the schools that fail to serve lower-income students despite having all the resources they need to serve them well. Tulane University, for instance, has an endowment in excess of $2 billion, the 68th largest in the country. Yet it checks in at last place in the South this year due to relatively poor graduation rates, low post-college earnings, and a high net price. Other low-ranked universities with substantial financial resources include the University of Miami, High Point University, Creighton University, and the University of Tulsa. 

As these examples show, having a name brand is no guarantee that a college is doing right by low- and moderate-income students. Indeed, colleges that are little known outside of their local area—like the University of Houston–Downtown, or Towson University, or Metropolitan State in Minneapolis—are the ones doing the best job of moving the most people up the economic ladder. If you’re a prospective student from a family without a lot of money, we’re confident that any of the schools in the top third of our Best Bang for the Buck rankings would be good places to invest your time and tuition dollars. And if you’re a concerned citizen or policy maker, we’d like to suggest that the colleges at the bottom of these rankings might not be the best places to be spending our tax dollars.

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