RESOLVING THE LEDGER
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As jobs have become more technological, job markets have become more competitive, and the costs of tuition have risen, college students are increasingly considering the ROI of their education, or how efficiently it can be used to acquire a high-paying job post-grad. “We need to be more outcome-oriented, more career-oriented when we think about what we're recommending for students in higher ed,” says John Friedman, a professor of economics and international and public affairs at Brown University. “There are a lot of people who really do want to get career advancement, to get economic value out of the time and money they're spending in college, and we should help them do that.”
To highlight U.S. institutions that provide the best value for their students, TIME partnered with data research firm Statista on the inaugural edition of America’s Best Colleges of 2026-2027, ranking the colleges that excel at student outcomes, learning environment, and attractiveness to students.
Methodology: How TIME and Statista Determined America’s Best Colleges of 2026-2027
The search for high ROI education has led many U.S. college students to pursue STEM careers. According to a 2026 report from the National Science Foundation, the STEM workforce grew by 26% between 2013 and 2023 compared to the non-STEM workforce, which grew 9%—and STEM jobs are projected to continue growing at a faster rate than non-STEM jobs for the next decade or so. From 2021 to 2023, higher-education degrees awarded particularly in science and engineering reached record highs, and the U.S. was the most popular post-secondary STEM education destination for international students.
Schools with historically strong STEM programs—and pipelines into high-paying tech jobs—rank high on the list, like research universities Stanford (no. 1), known for its startup culture and connection to Silicon Valley, and MIT (no. 2), a patent powerhouse.
At no. 3 is Harvey Mudd, a small liberal arts college with a student population of around 900. It offers only majors in STEM—appealing to Gen-Z students who are increasingly turning to trade schools to learn technical skills—but competes with the big schools by encouraging students to be engaged in humanities, social sciences, and arts so they can understand the ethical impact of their work on society.
“If anything, this is the time that the world needs more liberal arts colleges, because we need people to question what's happening,” says Thyra Briggs, Harvey Mudd’s VP of admission and financial aid. “We hear from the graduate programs that admit our students and from the companies that hire them that they are often the translators in their office because they can do the very high level technical conversations that you would expect, but they also know how to translate that to people who may not have that same background.”
The school’s famous Clinic Program is a year-long capstone project developed in the early 1960s that has a team of students work directly with companies like Blue Origin, Sokil, and the Federal Aviation Administration to solve real-life research problems complete with a budget, a deliverable, a due date, and a corporate liaison. Very often, these projects can lead directly to jobs, Briggs says.
Of course, studying science and engineering is not the only option for students to get the most out of their post-secondary education. For example, Claremont McKenna (no. 9), part of the same liberal arts college consortium as Harvey Mudd, offers a wider range of non-STEM majors. Its career center provides career resources for “interest clusters” to help students think about potential post-grad pathways and give them relevant organizations to explore. In a post last year, Claremont reported that over 96% of the recent graduating class had defined plans and a median salary of $80,000. “There are going to be a lot of different fields that provide ROI,” says John Friedman, a professor of economics and international and public affairs at Brown University. “If you look within particular fields, there's often a ton of variation between what people get paid.”
While data shows that STEM jobs tend to pay off, there are also benefits to studying in fields that are undersupplied and growing; but research into more niche high-earning career paths can be more sparse, and sometimes students don’t realize which fields are high-earning or ways in which they can apply their degree creatively.
For students who want certainty of outcome, sector-specific workforce training programs have been found to be most successful in increasing people’s earnings because they train people for a particular job at a company. Some colleges are catching on to the need to link the skills learned during class to what jobs require. For example, Fashion Institute of Technology (no. 51) is partnering with Lightcast to display data about career outlooks, job availability, salary potential, and hard and soft skills required for the niche majors they offer like technical design, spatial experience design, packaging design and toy design.
See the full list of America’s Best Colleges of 2026-2027 below:
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