Beyond the Paycheck: Redefining the True Value of a College Degree

WASHINGTON, DC – September 24, 2026

The American human capital pipeline is currently caught in a macroeconomic paradox. According to recent workforce projections, 72% of all U.S. jobs will require postsecondary education or training by 2031—a staggering leap from just 28% in the 1970s. For managerial and professional office roles, that figure surges to 84%. Yet, as the labor market's demand for degrees reaches unprecedented heights, public faith in higher education has cratered. Recent tracking data reveals that public confidence in higher education has plummeted to a historic low of 36%, driven largely by decades of tuition inflation that has vastly outpaced entry-level wage gains.

In response to this crisis of confidence, the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce (CEW) has released a comprehensive three-part research series aimed at redefining how policymakers, institutions, and the public measure the value of a degree. The series arrives at a critical juncture, providing a much-needed roadmap for states grappling with federal accountability mandates, shifting labor demands, and the existential need to prove that higher education is still worth the investment.

The Limits of Financial ROI

For decades, the prevailing narrative surrounding higher education has been dominated by a consumer-market model: students invest tuition dollars to secure a starting salary that justifies the debt. This philosophy is explored deeply in the first report of the CEW series, From Mann to Markets: Evolving Ideas About the Value of Postsecondary Education and Training to Individuals and Society.

The report traces the evolution of higher education from Horace Mann’s 19th-century vision of education as the great democratic equalizer to today’s hyper-focus on individual return on investment (ROI). While financial metrics are vital for consumer protection, relying on them exclusively has distorted the perceived mission of colleges and universities.

“Current conversations about the value of a college degree focus on earnings and costs. These monetary outcomes are a crucial baseline for holding postsecondary providers accountable and a central component of the value of postsecondary education and training to individuals and society. Measurement of these outcomes is necessary to protect and empower students,” said CEW’s Jeff Strohl, lead author of the first report. “However, it’s also important to recognize that we would be far poorer as a society without higher education’s nonmonetary contributions, which are hard to quantify. A more complete measure of value would account for those broader benefits as well.”

To bridge this gap, the second report, Measuring Postsecondary Value: A Model for Applying Research to Policy and Practice, introduces the Postsecondary Value Model (PVM). The PVM categorizes educational inputs, outputs, and outcomes across six core domains: investment, education, employment, earnings, wealth, and well-being. Crucially, it integrates nonmonetary benefits that are often omitted from standard ROI assessments, such as physical and mental health, civic engagement, and philanthropic activity.

“To improve student outcomes, leaders of states, institutions, and programs need to understand not only how their education systems perform on value metrics such as ROI, but also how underlying factors drive these outcomes,” said Jennifer Engle, lead author of the second report and director of policy and strategy at CEW. “Stakeholders should select metrics that are most relevant to their situations and audiences, whether they are seeking transparency for students and workers, accountability for leaders, or workforce development for employers.”

The Statehouse Blueprint and the Care Economy Penalty

The theoretical framework of the PVM meets the messy reality of governance in the third report, A Framework for Assessing the Value of Postsecondary Education and Training: State Guidance. This installment provides state policymakers with technical blueprints for assessing system-wide returns and implementing institutional accountability.

The guidance is particularly timely given the recent implementation of the U.S. Department of Education's Financial Value Transparency (FVT) and Gainful Employment (GE) regulations. These federal rules evaluate programs based on strict financial tests, specifically a Debt-to-Earnings (D/E) ratio and an Earnings Premium (EP) over high school graduates. Programs that fail to meet these thresholds risk losing federal Title IV financial aid eligibility or facing mandatory consumer warnings.

While these federal metrics establish a necessary floor against predatory programs, applying them rigidly at the state level creates a dangerous "public service trap." Professions critical to social infrastructure—such as early childhood educators, mental health counselors, and social workers—are systematically underpaid by labor markets relative to their educational prerequisites.

For example, data from educational associations shows that over half of public school teachers borrow to finance their degrees, carrying an average debt load of nearly $58,700. Yet, starting teacher salaries in many regions hover between $40,000 and $48,000. Under a purely financial accountability model, graduate teacher preparation and social work programs risk failing debt-to-earnings thresholds, pressuring universities to shutter these essential programs in favor of high-earning computer science or finance tracks.

The CEW framework urges states to use federal data as a foundation but to integrate broader contextual metrics before tying state funding to program outcomes. Recommendations include factoring in public service loan forgiveness (PSLF), state loan repayment assistance programs, and the external economic value generated by these professions.

“We focus the framework on these use cases because they are at the forefront of many state policymakers’ minds. Policymakers must make informed decisions about public investments in postsecondary education and also align their efforts with recent federal legislative and regulatory changes,” said Artem Gulish, lead author of the third report and senior federal policy advisor at CEW. “States can use these federal changes as an opportunity to set their own specific accountability goals, build more robust data systems, and thereby improve postsecondary outcomes.”

Overcoming Data Silos for a Complete Picture

Operationalizing the Postsecondary Value Model at the state level will require significant upgrades to existing data infrastructure. Currently, all 50 states operate some variation of a State Longitudinal Data System (SLDS), tracking wages by matching student records against unemployment insurance wage data. However, these systems suffer from severe limitations.

State wage records frequently miss self-employed gig workers, federal personnel, and graduates who cross state lines. More critically, states currently lack the integrated capability to track nonmonetary societal outcomes. Health data is heavily protected by HIPAA, and educational records are shielded by FERPA, making inter-agency data matching exceedingly rare.

As one state higher education data analyst noted during background discussions on the implementation of these frameworks, the reality of state-level data collection makes nonmonetary tracking an uphill battle. The analyst emphasized that while the Georgetown framework provides a vital conceptual target, state agencies currently lack the inter-agency infrastructure and statutory mandates to operationalize metrics like civic participation or well-being for formal performance-based funding models, leaving monetary ROI as the default administrative metric simply because it is easier to query.

Despite these technical hurdles, the CEW report series serves as a critical intervention in the ongoing debate over higher education's future. By providing a structured methodology to measure value without reducing institutions solely to immediate market wages, Georgetown researchers are offering a lifeline to a sector under siege.

If states can overcome the data silos and embrace a holistic view of postsecondary value, they may be able to rebuild public trust while ensuring that the labor market is supplied not just with high-earning professionals, but with the educators, caregivers, and civic leaders essential to a functioning democracy. The challenge now lies in the hands of statehouses and institutional leaders to transform these frameworks into actionable policies that protect both the economic and societal returns of higher education.