UPDATE: Best Colleges for Making Money

In the end, it looks like the Aggie grads are getting a better deal than the Bulldogs.

SmartMoney recently published a ranking of colleges that used a new way to measure the best schools: Comparing the amount that graduates earned down the road against published tuition costs. But after we received an inquiry from another school, No. 1-ranked University of Georgia said it inadvertently provided some incorrect information about its tuition.

The result: No. 2-ranked Texas A&M moves up to the top spot among schools that have the best “payback” ratio, followed by the University of Texas (Austin) and Georgia Tech. University of Georgia falls to No. 4. None of the other rankings were affected.

Using a survey from PayScale.com, an online salary database, SmartMoney took the median salaries that graduates were earning three and 15 years after graduation, then divided those salaries by the cost of a degree obtained in 2005 and 1993, respectively. But a University of Georgia spokesman said that, when he supplied the school’s tuition costs, he did not take into account the school’s switch from a quarterly system to a semester system in 1998. That lowered the tuition figures in our original calculations, inflating Georgia’s payback ratio.

"We regret the error and apologize to SmartMoney and to the other institutions in the ranking," said Vice President for Public Affairs Tom Jackson.

For the complete story, revised to reflect the updated rankings, see “The Best Colleges for Making Money.”

To see a slideshow of top colleges in our rankings, revised to reflect the updated information, see “Colleges that Pay Off.”