Best School Deal In America: the One That Produced Steve Jobs’ Nemesis
With unemployment still high, corporations slowing hiring, and the Federal Reserve pumping money into the system while praying that will do something, it doesn’t seem like the greatest time to be going deep into debt to pay for college. So SmartMoney and PayScale got together and figured out which colleges are actually worth paying for. And here’s who gets top honors: Georgia Institute of Technology.
Students across the country, and their parents, will now be looking at Georgia Tech, a school you probably never even noticed. Go ahead, we challenge you to name the mascot without looking it up (Ok, it’s Yellow Jackets). The median salary of a mid-career graduate is $102,000. That’s less than the $111,000 median of a Harvard grad, but starting tuition is also closer to $88,000 than $137,000.
So what’s so special about Georgia Tech, Jimmy Carter’s alma mater? It seems to have a practical streak. Wikipedia lists a string of CEOs who’ve come out of Georgia Tech to run companies including Coca-Cola (KO), AT&T (T), Wal-Mart (WMT) and GameStop (GME), among others.
It also produced Gil Amelio, who in 1994 joined the board of Apple (AAPL) and became CEO in 1996. Under him, Apple shares hit a low when an anonymous party (Steve Jobs, it turned out) sold a bunch of shares. In 1997, Jobs convinced the board to oust Amelio, and Jobs took over.
And since then, well, see the stock chart.
Meanwhile Reed College, the super-spendy private school where Jobs dropped in on calligraphy classes after dropping out, doesn’t get ranked in this survey.
Anyway, we’re sure Georgia Tech’s a great deal. College is what you make of it, and it's good to stay out of debt. Go Yellow Jackets.
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