Forbes has compiled this newly reimagined Best Value Colleges ranking based on tuition costs, school quality, graduation success rates and post-grad earnings.

Forbes reports.

Best Value Colleges 2016: The 300 Schools Worth The Investment

Have you heard, American higher education as we know it is fast approaching the cliff’s edge. Costs are way up, not to mention individual and collective student debt levels (now at $1.2 trillion nationally). State funding remains well below pre-recession levels. While the admissions race for spots at elite universities is ever more insatiable and manic, other schools are facing collapsing enrollment. The classic liberal arts are threatened by a surge in STEM programs, and there is talk of disrupting or “unbundling” college degrees in favor of digital portfolios of marketable skill sets. We idolize millennial billionaire dropouts such as Mark Zuckerberg, Elizabeth Holmes and Palmer Luckey.

A Google search of “is college worth it?” yields nearly 500 million hits. While that’s a pretty good time stamp of the alarm, it’s more abstract than actual. Federal data reveals enrollment among 18-24-year-olds in four-year degree programs holds at 28% for 2013 and 2012 (most recent years available), up from 26% the year this fall’s freshmen were born in 1998 and from about 20% when their parents’ generation graduated in the 1980s. In the case of parents, 94% say they expect their children to attend college, according to the Pew Research Center.


 
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