GOLDEN VALLEY, Minn. — There is ongoing debate these days about whether the cost of a 4-year degree is worth what students get out of it.
One thing is certain: higher education is an investment of time and significant money, and serious thought should go into your choice of schools. We're talking an average of $22,000 to $50,000 per year for tuition, plus room and board.
The personal finance website WalletHub aims to help with your decision-making, by providing an exhaustive list of the nation's top-performing schools at the lowest possible cost to undergraduates. WalletHub compared more than 1,000 higher-education institutions using 30 key metrics, grouping the data into seven categories, including net cost, student-faculty ratio, on-campus crime, gender and racial diversity, graduation rate and post-attendance median salary.
Highest scoring of Minnesota institutions is Carleton College, which comes in 45th nationally, and 7th among midwestern schools. Here is Minnesota's top ten, according to WalletHub.
- Carleton College
- Macalester College
- St. Olaf College
- University of Minnesota-Twin Cities
- University of Minnesota-Morris
- St. John’s University
- Concordia College-Moorhead
- Hamline University
- College of St. Benedict
- University of St. Thomas
Nationally, the top three highest-scoring institutions were Harvard, Yale and Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
For more on the survey and how rankings were compiled, check out the WalletHub website.
