Higher-Ed Dread

The difference between Harvard University and your local community college may not be as great as you think. It depends on your focus and interests.

Just ask Sung Rhee. His Kirkland-based company, Optimal, prioritizes tuition costs and alumni salaries in ranking colleges. Unlike U.S. News & World Report — once considered the gold standard for college rankings until critics pointed out flaws in its methodology — Rhee insists that Optimal offers more measurable and practical information.

“We realized there were some problems in the for-profit educational space,” says Rhee, who originally launched the company in 2004 as a lead-generation service for colleges and universities but later shifted to a focus on rankings. “We help people make decisions that are more pragmatic in terms of future returns, as opposed to making decisions based on lifestyle or reputation, which a lot of younger folks tend to do when they first attend school.”

U.S. News & World Report, for instance, has endured mounting criticism over what detractors call a misleading focus on institutional wealth and reputation. Several colleges have refused to participate in the rankings.

Optimal offers three different guides: GradReports, OnlineU, and SwitchUp, breaking down rankings, salary scores, and affordability of thousands of universities, online schools, and boot-camp programs. Two years ago, Forbes highlighted OnlineU as a comprehensive resource for students seeking the best return on investment from an online education. Optimal’s online guides receive 500,000 user visits a month, and its platform is free to use.

Choosing a school should involve more than just picking the one with the most reputable name, notes Rhee, who left Microsoft after a decade to launch a venture-backed company, ViAir, which later sold to messaging company Visto. He notes that many students and their parents focus less on practical matters while overvaluing reputations.

“A lot of people are graduating from college without a specific skill set that allows them to get into a career that is in high demand and well paying,” he says. “People are making decisions based on factors other than how it will prepare them for the future. That’s a mistake. What you major in has a much greater impact than what school you went to.”

It’s no secret that college costs have been rising for decades. According to the Education Data Initiative, the cost of attending a four-year public university has increased 179% in the past 20 years, and 124% at private colleges. Median salary for people with bachelor’s degrees has risen only about 10% in the past decade, to $61,000. Average federal student loan debt is more than $37,000, and the average student borrows more than $30,000 to pursue a bachelor’s degree.

While it may seem appealing to have a certain name on a résumé, it might not be any help if the school doesn’t offer programs applicable to the field a student is interested in. Alternatively, if a college isn’t the most popular or competitive overall, but excels in the degree program a student prefers to study, it may be worth considering.

According to Optimal’s GradReports, the University of Washington wins for overall best value, followed by Seattle University and Northwest University in Kirkland.

Other often-neglected options are boot camps and trade schools. For some, a boot camp focused on a specific skill set, or a trade school teaching career skills, may bring more value — and cost far less — than a four-year degree. Plus, many major companies have loosened their college degree requirements, looking more seriously at candidates with boot-camp certifications.

In its 2023 Bootcamp Market Report, Career Karma notes that students are increasingly choosing less costly boot camps instead of historically more traditional options. Almost 60,000 students across the United States graduated from a boot camp in 2022. The report notes that major employers who hire boot-camp graduates include Amazon, JPMorgan Chase, and Accenture.

“A lot of people are taking the boot-camp route instead of college,” says Brian Hepp, Optimal’s lead marketing manager. “It’s so much cheaper and you can usually get a certificate a lot faster.”

Seattle’s reputation as a tech center also works in its favor. With companies like Amazon, Microsoft, Boeing, and others, the state has a “well-paying tech scene” that’s quite keen on hiring alumni from a local college, Hepp adds. “That’s a big appeal for students to come here.”

Rhee, a big fan of public education, notes that public schools tend to be more competitive and less flexible, making it more difficult for students to get into their desired major. With smaller student bodies and less competition, private schools, on the other hand, tend to allow more flexibility for transferring between majors. Private schools also tend to offer more financial aid, though the price tag is much higher.

But choosing one over the other doesn’t matter in the end if a student doesn’t take advantage of all a college offers, Hepp notes.

“College is really what you make of it,” he says. “You can go to Harvard and not take advantage of all that you’re getting with a Harvard education, or you can go to that community college and really take advantage of it, and you can end up in the same place.”

Rhee admits that there is no one-size-fits-all approach when choosing a college.

“What we’ve learned from all this is if you take 10 people, you’re going to find 10 different criteria,” he says. “Rather than being a guide, we try to provide glimpses of information about a particular path you can follow.”