Is college worth it?
An April study says once UF students graduate, they will be getting fifth-best rate of return on their in-state tuition in the nation.
According to the study conducted by PayScale, an online database of employee salary information, students who graduate with a bachelor's degree from UF can expect about a 12.9 percent annual return on their total cost of attending college.
"It's a remarkable value for the amount of tuition you pay here in Florida," said UF spokesman Steve Orlando.
Out of 691 schools included in the study, UF shares the fifth spot with the University of California at Berkeley. The Georgia Institute of Technology holds the top spot with a 13.9 percent annual return on investment, followed by the University of Virginia, Colorado School of Mines and Virginia Tech.
PayScale's findings indicate that investing in a college education is just as lucrative, if not more so, than other investment options.
Thirty-year treasury bonds, for example, have an annual return on investment rate of about 4.5 percent.
To produce these statistics for each school, PayScale found the median salary of alumni who graduated with a bachelor's degree between 1981 and 2010, then divided that expected earning by the average net cost to complete a degree - a figure that incorporates a school's average costs for tuition, room and board and school supplies.
When schools were compared by graduates' median 30-year salary, UF sits 111th with an expected salary of $687,600.
However, UF had the 34th lowest cost of a college degree of all the schools in the study.
"There's no question that a college degree is a good investment," Orlando said.
