What’s a UNC System education worth? A new report puts a dollar figure on it.
Students who complete bachelor’s degrees in the UNC System earn, over their lifetime, a median of about $572,000 more than North Carolinians without a degree, according to a new report released Tuesday.
In total, the report found, students receiving an undergraduate degree from the system earn a median of about $1.2 million over their lifetime. Subtracting the cost of tuition and attending one of the state’s 16 public universities, those earnings translate into a median $500,000 return-on-investment for students compared to non-degree holding North Carolinians, the report found.
Students who complete graduate-level degrees in the state’s public university system experience a median return of $938,000 on the investment in their education, compared to North Carolinians who hold only bachelor’s degrees. That’s out of total, median lifetime earnings of about $2.1 million, the report found.
The calculations were made “by comparing the expected lifetime earnings of UNC graduates against the expected lifetime earnings of those without a college degree for undergraduate programs or with a bachelor’s degree for graduate programs, as measured by the American Community Survey, in the state,” the report states.
UNC System President Peter Hans told The News & Observer in an interview Friday that the study “shows that graduates of UNC System schools derive great value in their lives and in their careers.”
“And we’re proud of that,” Hans said.
The report, mandated and funded by the state legislature and conducted by Deloitte, analyzed investment returns for more than 700 undergraduate programs and 575 graduate programs across the 16-university system. It included millions of data points and took more than 18 months to complete.
The highest return for undergraduates was in the field of biotechnology, which yielded a median return of more than $3.2 million over a graduate’s lifetime. For graduate students, the highest return came from medical science programs, which yielded a median lifetime return of more than $5.2 million.
The report found that 94% of undergraduate programs and 91% of graduate programs in the system provide a positive return on students’ investments. Hans said he believes the Board of Governors, which oversees the university system, will “charge” himself and the chancellors across the system with assessing programs that did not result in a positive return and develop solutions to “grow the value proposition” of those programs.
Hans said he could “think of a number of ways we might address” that, including lowering the cost of certain programs or creating more direct career pathways out of certain programs. Hans did not explicitly say that the study could lead to the elimination of programs that do not provide positive investment returns for students, but emphasized a need for a “public-interest standard” in approving programs.
“We’ve got to be able to show the students that they’ll be better off at the end of their experience than they were going in,” he said.
Legislature’s involvement in ROI study
The state legislature mandated the UNC System conduct a study of programs’ investment returns through a provision in the state budget two years ago.
The provision directed the system to contract with an outside research group to “to conduct an evaluation of its current programs at each constituent institution,” including “operational costs, student outcomes, and return on investment (ROI) of each program.”
The provision further specified that the analysis should include, among other figures, the number of students in each program, the number of faculty and other staff employed for each program, the costs to operate each program, the return on students’ investments and the return on the state’s funding of the university system.
Hans said his conversations with legislators led him to believe that they “wanted a better analytical evaluation” of how the UNC System impacts the state.
“We tout the UNC System as an engine of opportunity. I believe it is. I believe the report demonstrates, proves that it is,” Hans said. “But they wanted something to quantify that, and that’s fair.”
The report found that for every dollar the state invests in the system, students earn an additional $23 in lifetime earnings, which Hans characterized as “a very strong return on investment for the state of North Carolina.”
“This additional income or purchasing power for North Carolina graduates flows into the State economy, producing monetary benefits from increased taxes, spending power, and societal benefits from community and charitable contributions,” the report states.
Hans said the report is “not tied to any particular ask” for additional funding from the state legislature, but he said he thinks it will provide the system and legislature a resource to consult to “better allocate our resources.”
Eventually, the report’s findings will be available online in interactive dashboards, with the hope that prospective students, their families and other stakeholders in the university system can use it as a resource in understanding the value of an education from the system. Hans acknowledged that task will be a difficult one, given that the report itself is 80 pages and includes a vast amount of data.
“The challenge to us is going to be to make this information not just accessible, but understandable,” he said.
Hans also cautioned students and others not to make decisions about their courses of study based solely on the investment returns they might glean.
“I do want to say, students should study what they what they love and pursue their their passions,” Hans said. “Because people who are passionate about particular fields and areas of inquiry tend to be very good at their work and very satisfied with their lives.”
Members of the UNC System Board of Governors are expected to review, discuss and respond to the report at their meetings this week. The meetings are being held at UNC Greensboro, where an ongoing review of academic programs — which could lead to the elimination of some programs — has prompted pushback from students and faculty this semester.
This story was originally published November 14, 2023 at 2:04 PM with the headline "What’s a UNC System education worth? A new report puts a dollar figure on it.."
