The Obama administration released its much-anticipated college scorecard Saturday morning, offering new insights into the value of a university degree ? and the risks associated with getting one.
The new system will present the average earnings of graduates at individual schools using Internal Revenue Service data. The scorecard spells out how students fare 10 years after graduation as well as how they compare with people who entered the workforce with just a high-school diploma.
Americans will ?be able to see how much each school?s graduates earn, how much debt they graduate with, and what percentage of a school?s students can pay back their loans,? President Barack Obama will say in his radio address, according to prepared remarks provided by the White House. The scorecard ?will help all of us see which schools do the best job of preparing Americans for success.?
For example, a prospective student could compare the median earnings 10 years out of college for different schools and see that for Harvard University it is $87,000, for Stanford University $81,000, for Columbia University $73,000 and for Princeton University $75,000.
At the same time the median debt of graduates vary considerably: for Harvard it is $6,000, for Stanford $12,224, for Columbia $19,435 and for Princeton $6,810.
