Contact: Sammy McDavid
STARKVILLE, Miss.--A new survey by The College Database shows Mississippi State graduates leading their peers at other Magnolia State universities and colleges in starting salaries.
According to the website report, graduates of the Starkville land-grant institution begin work making an average of $41,200. The complete survey is available by clicking here.
The next three highest starting salaries listed in the survey are $40,000 for Mississippi University for Women, and $39,000 at both the University of Mississippi and Mississippi College. MSU, MUW and Ole Miss are public institutions, while MC is private.
Katrina Silberstein said the report represents a new metric created by College Database to indicate "the top Mississippi colleges with the highest financial return on investment." All institutions on the list have annual tuition rates below $20,000, the organization's managing director for communication and partnerships added.
"With the cost of college a concern for many families, it's important for students to find a school that produces successful, well-paid graduates," Silberstein said. "Therefore, it's equally important to recognize the colleges and universities that offer both quality and affordable post-secondary options."
The College Database is a free, non-commercial website that uses data sets from the federal government and California-based Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching." Its sources and partners include:
--NCES (http://nces.gov/), the primary federal entity for collecting and analyzing data related to education;
--IPEDS (http://nces.ed.gov/ipeds/), the primary federal source for data on colleges, universities and technical and vocational postsecondary schools in the U.S.; and
--Carnegie Classification (http://classifications.carnegiefoundation.org/), a framework widely used in the study of higher education, both as a way to represent and control for institutional differences, and also in the design of research studies to ensure adequate representation of sampled institutions, students or faculty.