Degrees Of Opportunity: Rethinking Value In Higher Ed

Forbes

19 hours ago

Colleges and universities are doing a better job lately explaining the value of their degrees, and increasingly they're getting important help in making that case.
The challenge has been that while on average, a bachelor's degree is worth more than $1.2 million in lifetime earnings, the value for any individual graduate depends on multiple factors, including majors, where a person lives, and the cost of those degrees.
How can students and families find the best deals in higher education? College rankings of every type have been around for years, and for our money the best include those from Washington Monthly, created two decades ago. The Monthly avoids focusing just on elite schools, but instead prioritizes graduation rates, earnings after graduation compared with the price of degrees, and social mobility. And in a nod to today's chief concerns for families, the magazine includes a "Best Bang for the Buck" category.
Opportunity By Design
And as the value question becomes more urgent, we're interested in a new take—the idea of "Opportunity Colleges" as recently identified by the American Council on Education (ACE) and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.
Opportunity Colleges were identified as part of a substantial update to the Carnegie Classification system begun in 1973, focusing on whether schools are creating opportunities for students and helping them earn competitive wages.
According to ACE and Carnegie, the 479 Opportunity Colleges:'Better Together' at Ball State
One example is Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana, known for its Late Night alumnus David Letterman, but also for highly regarded programs in teaching, architecture, and journalism. It is the only public university in Indiana to receive the classification.
When he arrived in 2017, Ball State President Geoffrey Mearns brought a 'better together' mantra to campus and began working with local stakeholders, making connections and forging partnerships.
'What's insightful from the Carnegie report and methodology is they're analyzing salary and post-graduate earnings by discipline,' Mearns said in a recent conversation with Lumina Foundation. 'It gives context to why a Ball State graduate's median salary is X and a Purdue graduate's median salary is Y. It's because we're graduating teachers and journalists, and Purdue is graduating engineers.'
Career Connections at CMU
Another of the schools is Central Michigan University, 60 miles north of the state capital at Lansing. It offers one of Michigan's lowest tuition rates, and nine out of 10 graduates are either employed, pursuing further education, or engaged in volunteer service within six months of graduating. The Opportunity College designation is a nod to its partnerships that over time have nurtured career readiness.
'Workforce is in our DNA,' says CMU President Neil MacKinnon. 'It's always been our mission to produce workforce our region needs.'
The Michigan-based W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research found that 67 percent of CMU graduates remain in the state after completing their degree, compared with about 40 percent from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. Just over 89 percent of students at CMU are Michigan residents.
Hometown Value
That idea of retaining talent after graduation is a theme for Opportunity Colleges. At Ball State, Indiana residents account for 85 percent of the student body, and 'student ambassadors' work to encourage students to work in the state after they graduate. The County Ambassador Program allows each of Indiana's 92 counties to designate a student to represent the area and promote its quality of life and job opportunities to others.
Ball State is also innovating how to prepare students across Indiana for active citizenship after graduation. For example, through Third Way Civics: Indiana Advances, Ball State will engage with at least a dozen colleges across Indiana in implementing a flexible curriculum that combines historical inquiry, peer discussion, and interdisciplinary learning to promote civic understanding and engagement. Faculty members from any discipline can use Third Way Civics to help foster student learning in a new way—one that relies on students forming their own points of view and considering those of others, not just listening to lectures. These skills will be invaluable once students graduate and build their lives in communities across Indiana.
In short, the Opportunity College model reframes what success in higher education should look like: access, affordability, mobility, and meaningful community connection.
As more families seek degrees that open real doors without closing others through debt, schools like Ball State and CMU are charting a path forward—showing that the best return on investment isn't always measured in rankings, but in lives transformed.