March Madness and McNeese

by Leigh Moore

March 21, 2025

One of my favorite things about March Madness is the opportunity to shine a light on institutions which are relatively unknown--especially when favorable outcomes are demonstrable.

Earnings information is fraught with shortcomings, both philosophical and quantifiable. For families committed to an evidence-based college search, earnings are at least something empirical they can consider amidst so much marketing and hype.

The above visualization is interactive and includes only colleges left in the tourney. The amounts shown are the median earnings of graduates 5 years after graduation, disaggregated by college and major.

Circling back to my point about favorable outcomes, I attach below a static image from a tooltip after I filtered the viz to McNeese State only.

One more screenshot from our data: in a world where families are paying above $70K for out-of-state cost of attendance*, this looks pretty great. Especially for prospective engineers.

Until next round,

Leigh

(* For example, UC Boulder’s total published out-of-state cost of attendance for students living on campus in 2025–2026 is $72,700.)