cindyytong/worthofeducation

A data visualization of the nation's top ranked colleges and their graduates' earning power.

Worth of Education

Overview

College is expensive. In 2019, the average tuition of the top 10 schools reported by Forbes was $224,241. ¹ This number is expected to continue growing while student loan debt sores. According to a study by the Federal Reserve Bank, student loans neared $1.5 trillion in 2019, with each borrower having an average balance of $33,500. ²

Worth of Education (WoE) provides a visualization of the tuition cost and average salary earnings of graduates from Forbes top 50 ranked colleges across America. WoE calculates the opportunity cost of college tuition by mapping it against the potential earnings of reinvesting into the S&P 500 Index. ³ Data regarding salaries has been attained through Wall Street Journal’s release of data from Payscale, Inc’s year long survey of 1.2 million people. Information regarding tuition costs and school ranking has been pulled from Forbes.

Sources: 1: College rankings reported by Forbes

2: Information on college debt reported by the New York Fed

3: Average historial annual return of the S&P500 Index is 10% as reported by [Investopedia] (https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/042415/what-average-annual-return-sp-500.asp)

Functionality & MVP

WoE users are able to

1. View a map of the United States showing the location of Forbes top 50 ranked colleges
2. Filter out the top 10 colleges on the map by:
   • Most expensive tuition
   • Highest median starting salary for graduates
   • Highest median mid-career salary for graduates
   • Quickest to pay off loans
3. Hover over each college to view additional stats on that college including:
   • multi line graph tracing (1) the median salary growth of graduates over 10 years (2) 10 year investment return of tuition cost in the S&P 500 Index at an average annual return of 10% (3) cumulative payoff of student loan by graduate paying off at 20% of their annual income

Data & APIs

Data on the earnings of graduates from top tier schools is available through direct download on Kaggle from WSJ

Tuition costs & college rankings as of 2019 are sourced from Forbes

Wireframes

The visualization consists of a single screen containing a map of the United States, a panel to select options to filter the map by adding markers.

Architecture & Technologies

WoE is built with:

• Javascript for data retrieval and computation
• D3.js + HTML5 + SVG + CSS3 for interactive visualization
• Webpack + Babel to bundle js files