The majority of students go to college to get a better job and to make more money. How good a job have New Mexico’s seven, four-year public universities, done in accomplishing these goals?

A method of determining the financial benefit of a college education is to use the return on investment (ROI) formula. A student’s ROI will be determined by the amount of money he expects to earn in a lifetime from having the degree less costs required to get the degree, including lost income.

The Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity (FREOPP) has performed the Herculean task of creating an ROI data set for 1775 public and private colleges and universities and 30,000 bachelor’s programs. The data set has an ROI for each of the programs. How have the 50 state public university systems done?

Based on ROI, South Dakota has the best state university system in the country because it has the highest median ROI among the states. Its graduates can expect a median ROI of $216,972. New Mexico is third from the bottom with a median student ROI of only $20,877.

How do the student ROIs for New Mexico and the five surrounding states compare?

Median student ROI for NM and surrounding states

What are the best and worst student ROI majors at New Mexico’s seven, four- year, public universities?

Best and worst student ROI majors at NM four-year public universities

Many public universities have majors that result in a student having a negative ROI. That is, the student is worse off financially for having majored in a particular subject. This is especially true for students who major in the liberal arts. Are negative major ROIs a problem at New Mexico’s public four-year universities? Here’s the answer.

ROI for majors at NM 4- year public universities 

The only positive ROI programs at Highlands and Western were its nursing programs.

FREOPP also discusses the interesting concept of most valuable program (MVP).

The highest student ROI is a Cal Tach computer science grad at about 4 million dollars. The limitation is that there are only about two dozen grads per year. However, what about a program with a high ROI that graduates hundreds? By this standard the #1 MVP program in the country is the nursing program at the University of Texas – Arlington. Between 2015 and 2017 it graduated 5363 with a per capita student ROI of $743,465 for a total of $3,987,197,432. 

Registered nursing is the MVP in 26 states with business and finance in ten. Engineering is tops in seven states and computer science in six. The outlier is Utah Valley University with a degree in aviation.

What are the MVPs for New Mexico and the surrounding five states?

Most valuable programs for NM and the surrounding 5 states public universities

(Student count is for the years 2015 through 2017).

1. The ROI stats show that New Mexico has one of the worst performing state university systems in the country. 
2. As for positive vs negative ROI majors, NM Tech is the best while Highlands and Western are the worst.
3. The FREOPP data set is a tremendous source of information for high school students who are considering higher education, and their parents.. I am not aware of any other source that provides such comprehensive data about the financial consequences of choosing a specific major at a specific institution
4. The study also offers numerous suggestions on how states can improve their collective ROI scores.

Charles Sullivan is a retired attorney who has lived in NM for over 40 years.