AURORA | Aurora colleges outrank some of the most well-known universities in Boulder and Denver, according to the latest College Scorecard data from the U.S. Department of Education.
The DOE ranks colleges eligible to receive federal financial aid across the country by cost, graduation rates and postgraduate salaries, and Aurora colleges are outpacing some big names in the higher education scene for the latter category.
The University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus and Colorado Technical University-Aurora both made the top 10 list of schools producing the highest-earning graduates in Colorado, beating out University of Colorado Boulder and Metropolitan State University of Denver. On average, a CU Anschutz graduate who received federal financial aid earns $57,400 a year, making it the college with the second-highest earning graduates in the state.
Platt College-Aurora, CU Anschutz, CTU-Aurora and Concorde Career College-Aurora ranked in the top 30 out of Colorado’s 74 colleges for percentage of students earning more than the average high school graduate, which is about $25,000 a year.
While the Community of College of Aurora didn’t fare as well as the aforementioned colleges, it didn’t take the bottom spots either, just missing the top 30 in both categories.
On the other end of the spectrum, the Ecotech Institute ranked in the bottom half for post-grad salaries, meaning they produce some of the lowest-earning graduates in the state, according to the scorecard. Data wasn’t available for American Sentinel University and Pima Medical Institute-Aurora.