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Graduates from most local colleges and universities should make more money than if they had enrolled elsewhere, a new ranking system by The Economist contends. In fact, of 1,275 institutions rated nationwide, three area schools landed in the top 100 while a fourth landed at 102.

The University of Scranton ranked 22nd, with the study showing graduates earned, on average, $8,428 more than expected. Wilkes University was 25th, earning $8,243 more. Misericordia University and King’s College ranked 73rd and 102nd respectively, with actual earnings more than $5,000 above expected in both cases.

“We’re quite pleased with where this falls for us,” University of Scranton Vice Provost for Enrollment Management and External Affairs Gerry Zaboski said. “You don’t always know how things play out when someone uses such large data pools. It’s certainly encouraging to know our graduates do well when they leave.

“Our students and their families know the value of a Wilkes education,” Wilkes University Provost Anne Skleder said in a media release. “The Economist’s ranking affirms that value by showing that our students exceed expectations in their earnings.”

The Economist used the recently released federal “College Scorecard” as a basis for its rankings. The scorecard includes a wealth of information about colleges and universities nationwide, including average student debt and average student earnings 10 years after first enrolling.

The Economist went a step further and used “a multiple regression analysis” — a complex but widely recognized statistical tool — to estimate how much students in each college would have earned, on average, if they had enrolled elsewhere.

The regression analysis attempts to adjust for variables that statistically can impact academic and professional success, including gender, race, college size and the mix of subjects students chose to study.

To rank the 1,275 institutions it reviewed, The Economist compared the expected earnings it calculated with the actual earnings reported in the federal scorecard. The more students earned above the expected wages, the higher the ranking.

The Economist also used a “Marx and Marley index,” named after Karl Marx and the late reggae singer Bob Marley “to avoid penalizing universities that tend to attract students who are disinclined to pursue lucrative careers.”

The Economist argued the data show that enrolling in a top-tier university isn’t necessarily the best deal. Yale University, for example, rated 1,270th.

“A well-known economics paper by Stacy Dale and Alan Krueger found that people who attended elite colleges do not make more money than do workers who were accepted to the same institutions but chose less selective ones instead,” The Economist noted, “suggesting that former attendees and graduates of Harvard tend to be rich because they were already intelligent and hard-working before they entered college, not because of the education or opportunities the university provided.”

In releasing the rankings, The Economist was quick to point out multiple shortcomings in the math, despite efforts to go beyond the limitations of the College Scorecard. Two caveats stand out: The federal data only looks at students who applied for federal loans, leaving out large numbers of students in many institutions, and the 10-year window for gauging graduate earnings can be misleading in many cases.

Zaboski agreed. “For some professions, even 10 years out you are not hitting the full potential of your earnings,” he said. Students who go on to continue their education to a doctorate may barely have entered the workforce 10 years after first enrolling, for example. “That’s absolutely true for us.”

Still, he said, the fact that most local schools ranked so highly is a promising plus for the entire region.

“I think it also speaks a lot to the quality of education in this region. We are blessed to have a diverse but also outstanding set of institutions in our area.”

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By Mark Guydish

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Reach Mark Guydish at 570-991-6112 or on Twitter @TLMarkGuydish.