Gail Buckner, Your Money Matters columnist and financial reporter, is no stranger to reports on sky-rocketing college tuition or the availability of federal student aid. But literally in the middle of her Fox Business story on Friday, it’s as if she shouts out in a heading:
It’s About Time
What Buckner is referring to is applying the concept of ROI to higher education. First, she explains the concept of ROI, or the process of weighing various factors to determine if something is a wise investment. “It’s a way of quantifying the potential return you will get for every dollar you invest and is especially useful when comparing different investments”, Buckner writes. But the question she really wants to ask, which is set as the centerpiece of her article, is:
Since higher education is one of the biggest investments you will make in your lifetime, isn’t it time we started applying similar methods to judge whether specific colleges are worth the money?
What’s exciting for the users and creators of ionMatch is Buckner’s shout out for this latest tool from iontuition – a suite of interactive tools for college students, pre- through post-graduation. She shares with her readers that ionMatch “allows you to search for colleges based upon the major you want to pursue and what you feel you can afford to pay. You can also reduce your choices to schools within commuting distance of home.” But Buckner doesn’t stop there. She’s even more impressed:
But the coolest feature is that, by tapping into federal and other databases, ionMatch will also tell you the typical salary you will make when you graduate, which can help you judge whether the amount of debt you’ll have to take on to attend a particular school is worth it.
Definitely sounds like ROI – which is exactly what the creators at iontuition wanted when they built the advanced college-selection tool. In fact, they’d be the first to tell you that Buckner took the words right out of their mouths:
It’s time for college-bound students to ask, “What’s my ROI?”
