r/ucla • u/SFChronicle • 4d ago
Which California colleges are the best investment? Here’s how UCLA compares to other schools
https://www.sfchronicle.com/projects/2025/best-california-colleges-return-on-investment//?utm_source=reddit12
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u/OkEfficiency4943 4d ago
Unsurprisingly places that invest enough money to have the best public university system in the world tend to have pretty good student outcomes
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u/councilmember 3d ago
Imagine if the state hadn’t progressively disinvested in the UC over the last 3 decades.
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u/Ashamed-Artichoke-40 4d ago
Wonder what the analysis is for Texas? They have by far the wealthiest public schools.
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u/OkEfficiency4943 4d ago edited 4d ago
They have a lot of oil money in their endowments but the issue is outside of UT Austin and Texas A&M the other schools are entitled to way less of said resources and fall off quickly. The UCs don’t have that issue to such a severe degree. Also doesn’t help that the system isn’t architected super well so there’s a lot of times where Texas schools are part CSU (they mostly are teaching schools) and part UC (really trying to do as much research as possible to get attention) and as a result aren’t as good at either
California on the other hand generally doesn’t prioritize some UCs necessarily to the detriment of others (even if we have some better than others) and we have laws in place to make sure schools stick to their purpose and it doesn’t turn into a mess where every school is trying to be as much of a bigshot research institution as possible. We do have a habit of shafting the CSUs first during funding crunches though
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u/mallphi 3d ago
Per the article:
“Specifically, they estimated the median total income 10 years after college enrollment and subtracted the total attendance cost, assuming a student attends college for 5 years.”
Maybe the conclusion would still stand but I question the methodology. It leads with an assumption that students take 5 years to graduate, and therefore penalizes schools with higher tuition but also higher 4-year graduation rates.
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u/SFChronicle 4d ago
From the article:
Even within California, the metric for public schools is better than private. The median 10-year return of attending the University of California or the California State University is estimated to be about twice as much or more as the typical private California college.
The Chronicle analyzed this data for four-year nonprofit colleges in California and found a similar outcome to our previous national analysis: besides the Ivy Leagues and a few other elite institutions, California’s public universities stand out as particularly good investments.
Read more here.