I don't think so, I would assume private would be covered as well because Baylor University and SMU are both private but huge schools. Rice is also a private one but extremely well-regarded.

I thought they were just looking at earnings minus financial cost of college for those who attended, which has a great many shortcomings.

Who is the reference group?  The charts say "people who didn't enroll".  The footnote says "data from public colleges".  I can only assume that the reference group is "people who didn't enroll in a public college"?

That seems like a mish-mash of a lot of different kinds of people.

SimpleStacker

I don’t doubt that the data quality is great. It’s just that you can’t infer from simple averages what the returns are.

In order to estimate returns, you also need a measure of each student’s counterfactual earnings, which is very difficult.

charts_and_maps

Which College Degrees, Associate Degrees and Certificate Programs Pay Off or Not

Cje95

I don’t doubt that the data quality is great. It’s just that you can’t infer from simple averages what the returns are. 

In order to estimate returns, you also need a measure of each student’s counterfactual earnings, which is very difficult.