Return on a college investment: These majors pay the highest premiums

A college graduate earns $32,000 more in a year than a worker with only a high school diploma, according to a new report from Federal Reserve economists. 

The payoff on a college degree stands near its all-time high, the economists report in an April 16 post from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. If you think of college as an investment, the return on that investment has held steady over the last three decades at 12% to 13% a year. 

“I’d love to get that return on my savings account,” said Ted Mitchell, president of the American Council on Education, a nonprofit that represents college leaders. 

A crisis of confidence in higher education

The New York Fed report comes at a moment of crisis in higher education. The Trump administration is threatening billions of dollars in federal funding to elite universities over their policies on diversity, equity and inclusion.  

Trump officials also accuse the higher education sector of abusing the student loan system, invoking perennial complaints about runaway tuition and spiraling debt. In a April 21 Wall Street Journal op-ed, new Education Secretary Linda McMahon accused the industry of “hiking tuition and piling up multibillion-dollar endowments while students graduate six figures in the red.”  

The DEI broadsides resonate with Trump’s base. Half of Republicans have “little or no” confidence in higher education, compared with 12% of Democrats, according to Gallup polling.  

Among those who lack faith in academia, the most common complaint is that colleges harbor political agendas. Concerns run from liberal bias to rising costs to lackluster career preparation. 

A 2024 report from Pew Research Center found that only 22% of Americans believe college is worth the cost for a student who must take out loans. Only 1 in 4 said a college degree is very important for getting a good-paying job. 

The college salary boost rises throughout a career

If the goal of college is to earn more money, then the New York Fed report suggests academia is doing a good job. The analysis found that a typical college graduate earns about $80,000 a year, compared with $47,000 for a worker with a high school diploma. The college wage premium tends to grow throughout a career.  

“Judging the value of a college degree is not about your first job. It’s about the advantage you get over your working life,” said Jaison Abel, head of microeconomics at the New York Fed.  

College isn’t worth it for everyone. The return on investment is lower for students who take more than four years to finish, the economists found. Some majors yield a higher annual return than others: Around 18% for math, computers and engineering; 14% for health sciences; and 8% for liberal arts.  

“There’s almost no wage premium for the bottom 25% of graduates,” those with the lowest lifetime earnings, said Richard Deitz, an economic policy advisor at the New York Fed. 

Many Americans feel college is too expensive. A 2024 report from the New America think tank found that more than 80% of Americans think the cost of college is the biggest factor that stops students from enrolling.  

“I think that when people talk about, ‘Is college worth it?’, what they’re upset about is the cost,” said Phillip Levine, a Wellesley College economist who studies college pricing. “They have this impression in their head of skyrocketing college costs, and they don’t have an impression of skyrocketing benefits.” 

College 'sticker shock' scares many Americans

Academic leaders say Americans focus too much on the sticker price of college, which now exceeds $70,000 a year in tuition and fees at the priciest schools.  

“The sticker price is a number that every college and university needs to post on their web page by law. It’s the easiest number to find,” Levine said.  

But few students pay the sticker price. The actual price of college for most students is much lower. 

The average net price in tuition and fees for an in-state student at a four-year public college plummeted by 40% in a decade, after inflation, from $4,140 in 2014-15 to an estimated $2,480 in 2024-25, according to a recent report from the College Board. 

At private nonprofit colleges, average tuition and fees have dwindled from $18,680 in 2014 to an estimated $16,510 in 2024, after accounting for inflation and aid.     

As for student loans: Roughly half of students at public universities completed their degrees without debt in the 2022-23 academic year, compared with about two-fifths of students a decade earlier, the College Board found. 

Among all graduates with loans, the balance averaged $29,300 in the 2022-23 academic year, down from $34,800 a decade earlier, adjusted for inflation. 

“The student loan crisis is overblown,” Mitchell of the American Council on Education said.  

Colleges need to communicate better on price

Mitchell, Levine and others say colleges need to do a better job of communicating with the public about price.  

For many years, Levine said, academic leaders have been reluctant to share the sort of data compiled by the College Board: The actual price of attendance for a typical student, based on family income and wealth.  

That stance is changing. Consider Princeton University: Annual tuition, fees, housing and food at Princeton averages $82,650. But the average student receives $72,000 in grant aid. Thus, the average net cost of a year at Princeton is $10,650. 

Princeton offers those numbers in plain-spoken fashion on its website. Many other colleges do not. 

Another selective school, Washington University in Saint Louis, has partnered with Levine to offer an “Instant Net Price Estimator,” which gives a ballpark estimate of college costs based on household income and siblings attending college. Levine provides similar estimates for other schools on a site called MyinTuition.  

“We need somebody smarter than I to figure out a way to communicate price that is encouraging rather than discouraging,” Mitchell said. “And we haven’t gotten there yet.”