Cal Poly Pomona remains one of the best values in higher education, according to PayScale.com’s 2017 Best Value Colleges report.
The university ranks 31st in the country among public colleges in return on investment (ROI) for in-state tuition. According to the study, a Cal Poly Pomona undergraduate degree has a 20-year ROI of $533,000.
Overall, 12 CSU campuses were in the top 100. Only Cal Maritime (4), San Luis Obispo (11) and San Jose (21) placed higher. Cal Poly Pomona outpaced several public universities in the region, including UCLA (34), UC Irvine (40) and UC Santa Barbara (43).
The Payscale rankings were generated using data collected from 1.3 million employees who have earned a bachelor’s degree and work in the United States.
The university boasts academic programs that emphasize job readiness, such as The Collins College of Hospitality Management, which has an 80 percent job placement rate upon graduation and more than 100 companies that recruit on campus each year.
Cal Poly Pomona also has the fifth-largest public university undergraduate engineering program in the country and educates 1 in every 12 engineers in California.
“The Payscale rankings are further evidence that a Cal Poly Pomona education is a great investment,” President Soraya M. Coley said. “The university’s commitment to student success and our distinctive polytechnic approach help ensure that our graduates have what it takes for career success.”
Earlier this year, the Equal Opportunity Project ranked Cal Poly Pomona ninth nationally for helping students rise from the bottom fifth to the top fifth in income earnings for schools with an entering class of more than 300.
New York Times columnist David Leonhardt wrote about the top 10 schools in the project’s rankings. “They remain deeply impressive institutions that continue to push many Americans into the middle class and beyond — many more, in fact, than elite colleges that receive far more attention.”