I commented recently on a Brookings report that attempted to show which colleges contribute most to boosting their graduates’ career earnings. Now Brookings is offering more information on which colleges’ alumni are most likely to repay their student loans.
Writes report author Jonathan Rothwell, “Fans of Game of Thrones know that ‘a Lannister always pays his debts.’ So too do nearly all alumni from Notre Dame, Vassar, Harvey Mudd, and Brigham Young, at least when it comes to federal student loans.”
Rothwell points out that students from Harvey Mudd, Vassar, and Notre Dame tend to come from wealthier families, they would be expected to have high repayment rates, but the rates for those schools are even higher than expected.
The Brookings work is an effort to isolate the contributions a school makes to a student’s performance from the abilities the student brings to the college as a freshman. As I understand it, if two identical Lannisters went to college X and college Y, and the graduate from college X ended up with a mid-career salary $50,000 more than the graduate from college Y, then college X would have contributed the $50,000 difference to its graduate.
Visit Brookings here to download an Excel file containing Brookings’ college data.
