Scorecard data provides the most superficial overview of college performance metrics. Did you know the United States Department of Education collects, tracks, and publishes roughly half a billion data points to measure colleges? Let’s dig deeper.
While these metrics will often fall far short of reflecting the individual character of each college, they do help us consider broad questions. For instance, “Are St. Andrews students more or less able to pay their student loans?” St. Andrews scores near normal for most of these metrics. However, it may be fair to conclude that, when comparing colleges in the same categories, students leave St. Andrews with a little less debt and St. Andrews students pay their loans at a higher rate in the long run.
When counting both students who do not make it all the way through to a degree along with those who do, the median debt accumulated at St. Andrews is 29% below average. Among those who attain their degrees, St. Andrews students enjoy a debt that is 6% below average.
When it comes to repayment, St. Andrews students start out a little more slowly. The average one-year repayment rate is 29%, but St. Andrews is 17% below that. The good news is that by the seven-year mark, St. Andrews students prove 23% more likely to be in the repayment category.
The U.S. Department of Education places St. Andrews in the region labeled “Southeast.” That includes AL, AR, FL, GA, KY, LA, MS, NC, SC, TN, VA, and WV. Using the Carnegie Classification system, the Department of Education groups St. Andrews in “Baccalaureate Colleges: Diverse Fields.” That’s Carnegie Basic – Label 22 for those of you following along in the raw data. This group excludes other types of colleges such as associate’s colleges, career certificate colleges, art schools, etc. Therefore, the comparison group used above is all the other baccalaureate colleges, with a variety of majors, in the Southeast.
St. Andrews Alumni Council Report (February 2024)
St. Andrews Students Have a Higher Chance of Graduating on Time, Take Home Higher Earnings, and Have Less Debt
What do you want from your life? And what is the best way to get there?
Kevin Buckley, MD – Distinguished Alumni
Nate Andrews – Athletic Hall of Fame
Corinne Nicholson – Distinguished Merit
Cristie (Patterson) Mitchell – Athletic Hall of Fame
Dr. Rodney Lyn (’95) – Distinguished Alumni 2022
