Chicago, IL,
28
March
2016
|
14:30 PM
America/Chicago

Earning a Degree at GSU Yields Great Rewards

It’s not just us. The nation is catching on – Governors State University is the place to be. In a recent report published by LendEDU, an independent student loan and refinance online marketplace,  GSU ranks number 49 out of 1,005 public and private universities across the country in a risk-reward analysis. Appearing above GSU are Dartmouth, Princeton, and Stanford; below, you find names such as Wesleyan, Johns Hopkins, and Brown. Governors State has appeared on the national radar.

What is a risk-reward indicator? According to LendEDU, “We defined risk as the average student loan debt per graduate. We defined reward as the average early career pay, or the median salary for alumni with 0-5 years of experience.” They took these numbers for each institution and divided pay by debt, then assessed the results. The higher your school’s quotient is, the better its ranking. To illustrate the competition, GSU’s risk-reward indicator came out at 2.66 and Vanderbilt University –number 40 on the list – earned a 2.76.

What this means is that as an institution, we are minimizing college risk for GSU students with affordable tuition, and we are maximizing the reward by helping students find lucrative post-graduation employment. Governors State students make money and they don’t borrow too much to do it.

William Kresse,  Professor, Governors State University
 “It really shows that your chances of being a success are phenomenally high at GSU. Low tuition, high return. It’s like winning your NCAA brackets for the next five years.”
William Kresse, Professor, Governors State University

What does all of this mean for students? GSU’s Bill Kresse, Assistant Professor in the College of Business, broke it down like this, “It really shows that your chances of being a success are phenomenally high at GSU. Low tuition, high return. It’s like winning your NCAA brackets for the next five years.”

“Let’s say you went to college all on loans,” Kresse explained, “with GSU, you’ll have less debt and you’ll pay those loans off a lot quicker. You won’t have a burden of huge student loans weighing you down. This will give you a better credit score and takes pressure off of you, and you can go out there and make more money and pay it off. It really is quite a great benefit to a young person just starting out. You’re really getting the inside track toward success.”

GSU’s commitment to keeping tuition low enough to guarantee the ROI and risk-reward ranking was reaffirmed earlier this year when its governing body voted to freeze tuition. The university all will continue guaranteeing MAP money for all of its students in the upcoming academic year, contributing to GSU’s overall institutional value.