Considering the size of the investment in a college degree, it's only sensible to consider how well any given college does on providing a return on that investment before embarking on a degree. To that end, PayScale, Inc. has released its annual College Return on Investment Report, designed to provide guidance that can assist prospective students and families in making informed decisions about college debt and relative earning potential. It evaluates the cost of attending a college against a student's long-term earning potential after graduation. The report takes a look at 1,461 higher education institutions, including 922 private schools, 534 public and five service academies. PayScale based its rankings on the 20-year net return on investment for on-campus costs and considered the costs both with and without financial aid. Schools not reporting on-campus costs to the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System are not included in the rankings, except for service academies, most of which don't charge tuition. Income and education data used to arrive at estimates come from PayScale's salary survey, spanning January 2007–February 2018. Fair warning: Colleges with strong STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) programs occupy lots of the top spaces, and such jobs also provide the best ROI—with 73 of the top 100 school/job combinations falling into the occupation categories of Computer and Mathematical or Architecture and Engineering. And 95 of the top 100 school/major combinations include either a Computer Science and Math, Economics or Engineering major. Still, the top overall school/job combination is Business and Financial Operations at MIT. And incidentally, two colleges actually won two of the top 15 overall spots each—the Colorado School of Mines, which placed both 13th and 8th in the full rankings, and SUNY Maritime College, which likewise placed both 7th and 5th in the full rankings. Each has different costs for in-state and out-of-state students but nevertheless managed to achieve a high enough ROI in both categories to give them their lofty positions. In our slideshow below, each school was placed just once--7th and 5th, respectively. When considering cost, would-be undergrads should bear this in mind: 44 out of the top 100 are public schools, but when you figure in the amount of financial aid available, that falls to 35, while private schools fill out the rest. In addition, the median rank of the eight Ivy League schools improves from 36.5 to 20.5 after aid is taken into account.