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In a new report, “An Economic Ranking of State Public Higher Education Systems: 2019-2020,” we applied Gainful Employment Equivalent to see which states’ public college systems are doing the best job at passing this debt-to-earnings test. A state’s performance is determined by the percent of its students graduating from a program that passes the debt-to-earnings test. The map below shows how each state performed.

These results show a wide range of performance across the nation. North Dakota does the best, with 89% of its public college students graduating from programs that pass the debt-to-earnings test. Montana does the worst, with only 45% of students graduating from programs that pass the debt-to-earnings test.