Via Instapundit’s Glenn Reynolds: With students increasingly asking if a college degree is worth the cost, a new application helps assess graduates’ earning potentials:

Prospective students who are considering colleges in Virginia can now use a Web tool to see how much money newly minted graduates of individual academic programs earn, with data that is broken out by college and major.

For example, a bachelor’s degree-holder from George Mason University who majored in computer engineering can expect to earn $59,000 in his or her first year after graduation, according to the College Measures website, which is 56 percent more than the state average in that discipline. On the other side of the earnings scale, the average George Mason graduate who studied biology earns $32,000, still 15 percent more than peers from other Virginia colleges.

The web tool and an accompanying report were released this week as part of a joint venture between the state’s higher-education coordinating body and College Measures, a nonprofit group that the American Institutes for Research (AIR) supports. It is probably the most extensive, state-level consumer tool for tracking wages of college graduates.

The project is based on the Virginia Longitudinal Data System, which released detailed wage numbers earlier this month. The system has been in development for years, but got a boost last year from the state’s General Assembly, which mandated its creation.

Data systems of similar scope are in the works in Texas and Colorado, said Mark Schneider, an education data expert who is president of College Measures and a vice president at AIR. Those customizable databases could be finished by early next year. Florida already has a wage-tracking system in place, and College Measures is working on similar data in Tennessee and Arkansas. Officials in Nevada, Kentucky and Utah are also interested in tracking college graduates’ wages, according to Travis Reindl, the education program director at the National Governors Association.

“It’s a step in the right direction,” Reindl said of the Virginia tool from College Measures. Most importantly, he said it is among the first state-level efforts to forge a data-driven “connection between higher education and the work force.”