Attending college is an investment of time and money. Make a decision that will pay off in the long term. PayScale has ranked more than 1,000 U.S. colleges and universities, including private, public and for-profit schools, to determine the potential financial return of attending each school given the cost of tuition and the payoff in median lifetime earnings associated with each school.

Colleges Worth Your Investment - Full List

See the 2012 List - See the 2011 List - See the 2010 List

* While PayScale relies upon tuition information from the Department of Education for all schools listed in the PayScale College ROI Rankings, this school has an uncommon cost structure that is not reflected in this publicly available source. Actual tuition paid by the majority of students at this school may be less than the figures used in this calculation. Please see the school's website for more details.

CORRECTION: 23 schools were previously included in this ranking that did not have sufficient data available to determine an accurate return on investment calculation. The error that caused this miscalculation has been identified and corrected. Click here to see the list of 23 schools.