Whoa. I mean, of course, we’re not getting art degrees to be rich, but this new research from PayScale Inc. is pretty jaw-dropping. PayScale looked at the salaries of 62 MICA graduates ($40,000 to $74,000) and set that against the average cost of a degree there ($205,200) to calculate the average 20-year return on investment. It comes out negative!
That means, theoretically, 20 years after your MICA degree you’re still $90,000 behind someone who skipped college altogether!
According to Baltimore Business Journal, the data aren’t perfect and don’t present the complete picture, which could be filled out by a much larger sample of students and schools. But out of the 476 private, non-profit colleges PayScale looked at, MICA came in at 473rd in ROI. Ouch!
Less than half of the mica students pay full tuition so the analysis is flawed from the get go. This is true for most private schools.
They do make some of the best bartenders in baristas.