ROI (Return on Investment): We don’t see it that way

Over the past decade, we have seen more and more colleges using ROI, return on investment, figures.  In all honesty, we don’t know if the colleges did that or if some of the ranking newspapers did, but we feel this is a ridiculous metric and you should not be paying attention to it.  First and foremost, College Prep Coach was started from a financial perspective, based upon the fact that while on high school campuses, Counselors are either not at all allowed to discuss finances with families, or can discuss very little about finances with families.  How can you help a family plan for college when you have no idea what is financially possible or knowing what COA number you are trying to hit?  Now, granted, most high school Counselors we have encountered do not hold a MBA in Corporate Finance and spent three years selling money for General Electric Capital, so we have a leg up on this one, but the baseline is that the return on investment calculation means you’re getting money back in the future for money you put out today.  Reality check, you’re not getting any money back from your student’s college education.  We send our students to college out of love and out of a desire for them to succeed and be happy in a world which at times can be quite tough.  As parents ourselves, our goal is to get our kids/students to the point where they can be self-sufficient and enjoy life.  Example…, what if your student went into college targeting a finance degree.  After two years, they discover a Liberal Arts path would much better suit their desires and they come out with a combination of Philosophy and Anthropology and are the happiest you’ve ever seen them in your lifetime.  The Finance degree may have paid more money in the future (to them, not back to you), but you’ve never seen your student as happy and satisfied as where they are at that moment in time.  You do the ROI calculation on that one and you will see that it truly is a ridiculous metric.  We focus on the student, not the ROI figure.