Thaddeus Stevens vs. ‘The Best’ Four-Year Colleges
One of the most important things Thaddeus Stevens College of Technology offers students is value. So we were particularly interested when the financial publication Kiplinger released its list of “Best College Values, 2018.” The full list is behind a paywall, so PennLive summarized the 19 colleges from Pennsylvania that made the list.
Unfortunately, the rankings only consider four-year colleges. That’s shortsighted, and I’ll show you why.
The rankings consider five key factors: acceptance rate, graduation rate, cost per year, debt per graduate and a student’s average salary 10 years after starting college.
The top PA schools are a who’s who of the Commonwealth’s internationally-acclaimed institutions, including Bucknell, Carnegie Mellon, Franklin & Marshall, Penn, Penn State, Swarthmore and Temple. It is proper to hold these institutions in high regard.
But we want you to know how Thaddeus Stevens College of Technology measures up. We calculated the average in each ranking factor for all 19 of the PA four-year colleges on the Kiplinger list.
Then we charted our own information in the same graph. Since we are a two-year college, we counted our two-year graduation rate (vs. four-year grad rate for the schools on the Kiplinger list) and our graduate's average salary after eight years of starting college (vs. 10 years for four-year students).
The most glaring difference: cost and debt! That’s what we mean when we talk about value.
Pennsylvania is blessed with some of the finest institutions of higher learning in the world, and students should be encouraged to pursue degrees at any of the 19 colleges on Kiplinger’s list—and many others across the commonwealth.
But their four-year degrees are not the only path to financial success, and they often do not represent the best value in higher education.
That’s why we need intelligent publications like Kiplinger to think beyond the bachelor’s degree. Students and parents need to know there are other ways to achieve success.
Here's an interactive graph to compare the results. Click and move the vertical slider left to reveal the Thaddeus Stevens graph:
Dr. Parker is the vice president of academic affairs.