Education  March 30, 2015

CSU, CU rank 2nd, 3rd for value among Colorado’s colleges

Colorado State University in Fort Collins provides the second-best bang for the buck among the state’s colleges and universities, according to a new report, with the University of Colorado Boulder coming in third on the list.

The report was released Monday by New York-based SmartAsset, a data-crunching firm that provides tools and reports to help people make financial decisions. The report weighed factors like average scholarships and grants provided, average starting salary for graduates, tuition, student costs of living, and retention rates to arrive at an affordability index score for each school.

CSU ranked 61st nationally and CU was 140th. They both came in behind Colorado School of Mines in Golden, which ranked first in the state and second nationally behind only the University of Michigan.

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Mines, despite a higher tuition than its in-state counterparts, was boosted by an average starting salary for graduates of $66,700 and a higher retention rate, or the number of students re-enrolling at the school the following year.

CSU and CU graduates, by comparison, have average starting salaries of $45,700 and $46,300, according to the SmartAsset data.

The University of Colorado-Colorado Springs came in fourth in the state, followed by Fort Lewis College in Durango. Locally, the University of Northern Colorado in Greeley also made the top 10 in Colorado, landing 10th on the list and 552nd nationally.

Colorado State University in Fort Collins provides the second-best bang for the buck among the state’s colleges and universities, according to a new report, with the University of Colorado Boulder coming in third on the list.

The report was released Monday by New York-based SmartAsset, a data-crunching firm that provides tools and reports to help people make financial decisions. The report weighed factors like average scholarships and grants provided, average starting salary for graduates, tuition, student costs of living, and retention rates to arrive at an affordability index score for each school.

CSU ranked 61st

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