Intro to College Azimuth: The Data of Higher education in Illinois.

A little over a decade ago, I moved back home for family reasons and used it as an opportunity to step back and think about the problems I wanted to work on.

 The question of how people pay for college was the one that kept resonating with me, time and time again.

To understand how I could help people navigate this gap, I spent a lot of time—okay, a very unhealthy amount of time—analyzing and synthesizing data around higher education. I was trying to figure out where the value actually was, with the goal of getting more money to the people who needed it most.

I built a company around this work. But all the while, I'd also advise others on how to parse the data, how to think about it, and ultimately what conclusions to draw from it.

However, everyday people are making consequential, life-altering decisions with what—at best—can be described as incomplete information.

 The data as it exists today is usually either:

- Geared toward affluent consumers looking for prestige, or

- Built for policymakers who are less focused on how real people make everyday decisions

 However, very little was written about what really matters to students and their families looking at making one of the largest financial decisions of their lives. 

I decided to make a series of tools that families, counselors, and students can use to navigate the college decision-making process with real data—informed by what college is *supposed to be*.

In the process of doing this, I learned a lot more than I did previously, and it clarified a few of the concepts I intuitively understood but hadn’t taken the time to sit down and parse through. 

So, let's start walking through them. First, let me explain why I think the University of Illinois Chicago is one of the best universities in the country.

1. Why I think UIC is One of the Best Colleges in the Country

 

One of the key concepts I grappled with early on was whether the data represented an **input**—a reflection of who enters an institution—or an **output**—a reflection of what the institution and student accomplished together.

I went to UChicago for graduate school. I loved it; I took a lot from it. But anyone being honest will tell you that most of the students there come to the table with a lot of the value they end up with.

It's very different for an institution to take someone without a lot of outside support, without a lot of resources, with a lot of things working against them—and help them get onto a better glide path for themselves and their families.

Which brings me to why I think UIC is one of the best Universities in the nation. 

Some of the data:

Institution	UIC	UChicago	Northwestern	UIUC
Median Earnings (10yr)	$68,740	$91,885	$89,363	$81,054
Earnings Percentile (National)	92.2nd	98.2nd	97.9th	96.6th
Pell Recipients	49.6%	14.5%	18.7%	23.8%

People will focus on the top-line number. It's real, and its important but I also think its important to look at who the institutions are actually getting there.

 UIC serves ~10,813 Pell students which is in the top 2% for low-income enrollment among all higher education institutions.

Half their student body comes from low-income families. And yet their graduates land in the 92nd percentile nationally on earnings.

 If you account for who walks in the door versus who walks out (more on this in a second), UIC performs at the 98.1st percentile nationally.

 But This Isn't Just Grading on a Curve

 UIC creates *real*, outsize value for many of their students.

If we look solely at the *number* of high earners coming out of UIC versus UChicago, UIC actually significantly outpaces the University of Chicago:

Institution	UIC	UChicago
Earnings Threshold	$95,794 (P75)	$91,885 (Median)
Students at or above this level	~982	~679

The earnings thresholds are nearly identical—about $4,000 apart. But UIC has 45% more students at that level than UChicago.

 If your definition of "elite outcomes" is "students earning $90K+," UIC produces more of them than UChicago—and it's not close.

Of course, UChicago has higher individual top earners (P75 = $158K). But UIC produces more humans crossing the $90K threshold because it operates at scale

2. "Wins Above Replacement" for Education

In sports analytics, Wins Above Replacement (WAR) is a standardized way of measuring a player’s total contribution relative to a readily available “replacement-level” player — someone a team could sign or call up at minimal cost.

As FanGraphs defines it, WAR asks a simple question: how many additional wins did this player contribute compared to a freely available alternative? A player with 5 WAR produced roughly five more wins than a replacement-level player would have in the same role.

This framing matters because raw performance alone can be misleading. A shortstop who hits .320 sounds exceptional — but if the average shortstop hits .310, the incremental value is modest. Meanwhile, a pitcher with a 3.50 ERA might be enormously valuable if the league average is 4.50, even if their raw numbers look less flashy at first glance.

The way I talk about UIC — and about colleges more broadly — is essentially this same concept applied to higher education.

The question isn’t how good are the outcomes, full stop.

It’s how good are the outcomes relative to what we would expect, given who the institution serves and the resources it starts with?

So How Can We Calculate "Earnings Above Replacement"

 We:

1. Run a regression on the inputs of an institution (student demographics, parent income, academic preparation)

2. Look at their outputs (earnings 10 years after entry)

3. Calculate the difference between what we'd predict a school's graduates to earn and what they actually earn

If your students earn $70,000 and our model predicted $60,000, you have +$10,000 value-added. If they earn $90,000 but we predicted $95,000, you have -$5,000 value-added—your students are actually underperforming expectations.

The question we’re asking is whether or not the students coming out of an institution are earning more than we think they would at any replacement university. 

So what does this look like in Illinois?

Illinois VA Rank	School	Median Earnings	Value-Added	Natl. Percentile	Pell %
#1	UIC	$68,740	+$32,208	98.1st	49.6%
#2	Saint Xavier	$58,656	+$28,656	97.4th	56.0%
#3	Dominican	$60,327	+$26,647	96.8th	49.3%
#4	Northern Illinois	$57,808	+$24,393	96.3rd	45.6%
#5	Governors State	$58,169	+$20,336	94.9th	52.4%

Some other notable institutions:

Illinois VA Rank	School	Median Earnings	Value-Added	Natl. Percentile
#14	UIUC	$81,054	+$11,415	88.3rd
#22	DePaul	$68,751	+$2,779	69.2nd
#29	UChicago	$91,885	+$858	62.1st
#34	Northwestern	$89,363	-$1,320	52.6th
#37	Loyola Chicago	$71,530	-$2,779	46.7th

On this specific metric, Northwestern—with $89,000 median earnings—ranks #34 out of 51 Illinois schools on value-added. Below the median. Their students actually earn *less* than what we'd predict given their backgrounds.

This leads me to...

3. Why I'm Not Impressed by Elite Schools (Adjusting for Endowments)
 

In finance, when evaluating an investment portfolio, one of the first things you do is establish a baseline. Saying "I made a million dollars" sounds nice, but without context it's meaningless. It's one thing if you started with a bus ticket and $32 to your name; it's another entirely if you had $10 million to deploy.

And yet, that's more or less exactly what we do when we talk about educational outcomes. 

So what does it look like when we compare resources available to the value created?

Institution	Endowment size	Per Student	Value-Added	VA Percentile	Pell %
Northwestern	$10.6B	$1,177,901	-$1,320	52.6th	18.7%
UChicago	$8.6B	$1,134,307	+$858	62.1st	14.5%
UIUC	$2.5B	$72,612	+$11,415	88.3rd	23.8%
Wheaton College	$558M	$267,481	-$11,622	12.6th	20.2%
UIC	$525M	$24,068	+$32,208	98.1st	49.6%
Art Institute Chicago	$361M	$130,542	-$16,491	4.6th	19.1%

The pattern is striking:

• Northwestern: $1.18M per student → *negative* value-added
• UChicago: $1.13M per student → barely positive value-added
• UIUC: $73K per student → solid value-added (+$11K)
• UIC: $24K per student → exceptional value-added (+$32K)

Northwestern has 49× more endowment per student than UIC. Yet UIC's students outperform expectations by $32K while Northwestern's underperform by $1.3K. 

UIUC shows that public flagships can deliver strong value-added with modest resources. But UIC does even more with even less.

The point being that resources don't automatically translate to outcomes, at least not to the extent we'd like to think. In fact, the relationship almost inverts—the less-resourced schools serving more low-income students generate the most value-added.

 4. Pulling It All Together: The Mobility Index

So far, we've talked about:

• Who creates value (UIC outperforms expectations)
• How to measure value (Earnings Above Replacement)
• Why resources don't equal outcomes (the endowment paradox)

 Now: how do we pull all of this into a single framework for evaluating colleges?

My opinion, if you haven’t guessed already is that this is the right lens to start thinking about "what the best schools are.

Before we go further, I want to be explicit about something: high earnings and high mobility are not the same thing. 

- High earnings can reflect who a school admits

- Mobility reflects who a school gives an upward pathway to.

A school serving 15% Pell students with $90K median earnings is accomplishing something very different from a school serving 50% Pell students with $65K median earnings. Both matter. But they are not the same accomplishment—and we shouldn't pretend they are.

So How can we build the Mobility Index (Note: The Carnegie Foundation has one something similar, which I admire greatly. I just think about it slightly differently).

How We Build the Mobility Index

We measure mobility along two primary dimensions: Access and Success.

Access — Who Gets In

Component	Description
Pell Share	Percentage of students from low-income families
Transfer-In Share	Share of students entering via transfer pathways (second chances)
Absolute Pell Count	Scale matters — serving 5,000 Pell students is meaningfully different than serving 200
Financial Risk Adjustment	Schools with smaller endowments take greater financial risk to serve low-income students

Success — Who Gets Out Ahead

Component	Description	Weight
Low-Income Graduate Earnings (10yr)	Earnings at 10 years for students in the bottom tercile by family income	70% (via ratio)
Pell Completion Rate	Do Pell students actually graduate? Normalized against peer institutions	30%

Methodological Choices

We’ve made several explicit methodological decisions that diverge from common ranking frameworks, including those used by the Carnegie Foundation.

Decision Area	Our Choice	Rationale
Transfer-In Weight	30% of access score	Community college transfers are a critical mobility pathway
Scale Matters	Absolute Pell count weighted	Serving many low-income students is meaningfully different than serving a few
Financial Risk	Endowment-adjusted scoring	Schools with fewer resources take greater risk to serve low-income students
Success Metric	Low-income earnings only	We focus on outcomes for the bottom tercile, not overall medians

Illinois Schools: Mobility Index (National Percentiles):

School	Mobility	← Access	← Success	Pell %	Pell Students
	(Access + Success)
UIC	99th	96th	90th	49.6%	10,813
UIUC	98th	91st	93rd	23.8%	8,244
Illinois State	94th	78th	70th	30.0%	5,533
Northern Illinois	92nd	93rd	68th	45.6%	5,137
Northwestern	90th	88th	99th	18.7%	1,676
SIU-Edwardsville	89th	59th	77th	31.6%	2,790
SIU-Carbondale	88th	71st	76th	36.6%	2,975
UChicago	87th	82nd	99th	14.5%	1,091
DePaul	86th	82nd	84th	30.7%	4,379
Northeastern Illinois	81st	91st	46th	53.8%	2,080

All scores are national percentiles (0-100). Mobility = Access + Success combined.**

It's mostly important to note that there are different kinds of institution—these are better or worse inherently, but serving a fundamentally different purpose.

However, in much of the discourse I see we tend to focus exclusively on one frame, and my hope is that we also start talk about this one.

Data Sources

• Earnings: U.S. Department of Education College Scorecard (10-year post-entry)
• Pell Data: IPEDS Student Financial Aid Survey
• Completion: IPEDS Graduation Rate Survey (Pell-specific cohorts)
• Peer Groups: Control type + Size band + Endowment per Pell student