Three Colleges That Redefine Return on Investment (COPY)

As discussions about return-on-investment metrics become increasingly central to public conversations about higher education, an important question remains: What forms of value do those metrics fail to capture? ACCJC-accredited institutions consistently demonstrate strong economic value, supported by exceptional affordability, with roughly half of students paying no tuition or fees. Yet some of ACCJC's most remarkable institutions highlight the limits of any earnings-based measure. Three tuition-free colleges, each serving populations largely beyond the reach of traditional higher education, produce returns measurable not only in wages but also in service, community impact, and personal transformation.

The Salvation Army College for Officer Training at Crestmont

Tucked onto a 44-acre campus on the Palos Verdes peninsula above the Pacific Ocean, the Salvation Army College for Officer Training at Crestmont (CFOT) is one of the most singular institutions in American higher education. It is a wholly owned proprietary institution of The Salvation Army, USA Western Territory, and one of four Salvation Army officer training colleges in the United States. Its sole purpose is to prepare cadets for full-time ordained ministry as Salvation Army officers serving the Western Territory.

For the cadets accepted into CFOT, education costs nothing. Tuition, course materials, official travel, childcare, and room and board are supported entirely by The Salvation Army. The two-year program leads to both an Associate of Arts in Ministries degree and commissioning and ordination as a Salvation Army officer.

The achievement data CFOT publishes in its annual Fact Book is striking by any standard. Over the ten-year span from 2015 to 2025, CFOT reports an overall course success rate of 99 percent and an overall course completion rate of 99 percent. Two-year retention runs in the high 90s, and the College reports a 98 percent first-to-second-year retention rate among full-time first-year cadets. Job placement is the most distinctive figure of all: because every cadet who successfully completes the program is commissioned into full-time ministry with an immediate appointment at a Salvation Army corps or other facility, CFOT reports a 100 percent job placement rate for graduating cadets.

What CFOT graduates take into the field defies the standard wage-premium framework entirely. They go on to lead corps congregations, run homeless shelters and food pantries, direct adult rehabilitation centers serving people in recovery from addiction, coordinate emergency disaster services, and oversee anti-human-trafficking programs, often in communities where the Salvation Army is the social safety net of last resort. It is hard to imagine a clearer example of an ACCJC institution whose value to society compounds in ways no economic metric could quantify.

The Salvation Army College for Officer Training at Crestmont

Tucked onto a 44-acre campus on the Palos Verdes peninsula above the Pacific Ocean, the Salvation Army College for Officer Training at Crestmont (CFOT) is one of the most singular institutions in American higher education. It is a wholly owned proprietary institution of The Salvation Army, USA Western Territory, and one of four Salvation Army officer training colleges in the United States. Its sole purpose is to prepare cadets for full-time ordained ministry as Salvation Army officers serving the Western Territory.

For the cadets accepted into CFOT, education costs nothing. Tuition, course materials, official travel, childcare, and room and board are supported entirely by The Salvation Army. The two-year program leads to both an Associate of Arts in Ministries degree and commissioning and ordination as a Salvation Army officer.

The achievement data CFOT publishes in its annual Fact Book is striking by any standard. Over the ten-year span from 2015 to 2025, CFOT reports an overall course success rate of 99 percent and an overall course completion rate of 99 percent. Two-year retention runs in the high 90s, and the College reports a 98 percent first-to-second-year retention rate among full-time first-year cadets. Job placement is the most distinctive figure of all: because every cadet who successfully completes the program is commissioned into full-time ministry with an immediate appointment at a Salvation Army corps or other facility, CFOT reports a 100 percent job placement rate for graduating cadets.

What CFOT graduates take into the field defies the standard wage-premium framework entirely. They go on to lead corps congregations, run homeless shelters and food pantries, direct adult rehabilitation centers serving people in recovery from addiction, coordinate emergency disaster services, and oversee anti-human-trafficking programs, often in communities where the Salvation Army is the social safety net of last resort. It is hard to imagine a clearer example of an ACCJC institution whose value to society compounds in ways no economic metric could quantify.

Deep Springs College

Deep Springs College is, by almost any measure, the most unique institution in America. Founded in 1917 by industrialist L. L. Nunn in a high-desert valley between the White and Inyo mountain ranges of eastern California, Deep Springs operates on a 32,000-acre working cattle ranch and alfalfa farm forty miles from the nearest small town. Between 24 and 30 students live and work together in one of the smallest residential colleges in the United States. Acceptance rates range from 3-5% each year, and every admitted student receives a full scholarship that covers tuition, room, and board. In cases of demonstrated financial need, the College also covers books, travel, and medical insurance.

What students do pay is labor and responsibility. Deep Springs is built on what Nunn called the three pillars: academics, self-governance, and manual labor. Students work approximately 20 hours per week in assigned ranch operations while simultaneously sharing responsibility for the governance of the institution itself. They sit on standing committees that admit new classes, hire and review faculty, and govern campus life through two student-elected voting seats on the board of trustees. Classes are intensive seminars, typically four to ten students, organized around primary texts and rigorous discussion.

At age eighteen, students are trusted to admit the next class, debate and shape curricular priorities, and rebuild the irrigation system before breakfast, and then live with the consequences of those decisions.

The outcomes are extraordinary. More than 95 percent of Deep Springs students go on to complete a bachelor's degree, and more than half eventually earn graduate or terminal degrees. Yet what alumni most often identify as transformative is not a credential or transfer destination. It is the experience of being entrusted with genuine responsibility for a real institution.

Two years in Deep Springs Valley may not appear in any earnings-premium calculation, but the college’s century long record suggests that an education organized around academics, labor, and democratic self-governance produces graduates prepared not only to succeed, but to lead.

Deep Springs College

Deep Springs College is, by almost any measure, the most unique institution in America. Founded in 1917 by industrialist L. L. Nunn in a high-desert valley between the White and Inyo mountain ranges of eastern California, Deep Springs operates on a 32,000-acre working cattle ranch and alfalfa farm forty miles from the nearest small town. Between 24 and 30 students live and work together in one of the smallest residential colleges in the United States. Acceptance rates range from 3-5% each year, and every admitted student receives a full scholarship that covers tuition, room, and board. In cases of demonstrated financial need, the College also covers books, travel, and medical insurance.

What students do pay is labor and responsibility. Deep Springs is built on what Nunn called the three pillars: academics, self-governance, and manual labor. Students work approximately 20 hours per week in assigned ranch operations while simultaneously sharing responsibility for the governance of the institution itself. They sit on standing committees that admit new classes, hire and review faculty, and govern campus life through two student-elected voting seats on the board of trustees. Classes are intensive seminars, typically four to ten students, organized around primary texts and rigorous discussion.

At age eighteen, students are trusted to admit the next class, debate and shape curricular priorities, and rebuild the irrigation system before breakfast, and then live with the consequences of those decisions.

The outcomes are extraordinary. More than 95 percent of Deep Springs students go on to complete a bachelor's degree, and more than half eventually earn graduate or terminal degrees. Yet what alumni most often identify as transformative is not a credential or transfer destination. It is the experience of being entrusted with genuine responsibility for a real institution.

Two years in Deep Springs Valley may not appear in any earnings-premium calculation, but the college’s century long record suggests that an education organized around academics, labor, and democratic self-governance produces graduates prepared not only to succeed, but to lead.

Mount Tamalpais College

The third institution is the youngest, the smallest in physical footprint, and the one whose educational philosophy most directly reframes the value question. Mount Tamalpais College (MTC) is the only accredited independent liberal arts college in the United States whose main campus sits inside a prison.

Located within San Quentin Rehabilitation Center in Marin County, California, MTC traces its roots to a small associate-degree program launched in 1996 by Patten University, a San Quentin administrator, and a University of California, Davis faculty member. The program had no budget and a volunteer faculty. It later became known as the Prison University Project and was awarded the National Humanities Medal by President Obama in 2016. It became Mount Tamalpais College in 2020, achieved ACCJC Candidate status that same year, and received Initial Accreditation in 2022.

Mount Tamalpais College charges no tuition and no fees. Its sole admission requirement is a high school diploma or GED, and the College does not screen applicants based on age, length of sentence, the offense for which they were convicted, or time remaining on their sentence.

Approximately 300 students are enrolled at any given time, with capacity recently increased through the construction of a new education complex at the prison. During the 2024-25 school year, 334 students took at least one of the College's courses. Since 1996, more than 4,300 students have taken at least one course through the program. The College offers an Associate of Arts in Liberal Arts and an intensive College Preparatory Program in math and writing.

The outcomes data are compelling. A 2012 program evaluation found drastically reduced recidivism rates among released MTC graduates. A 2018-19 study conducted by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley found measurable gains in students' civic orientation and self-efficacy, documenting both educational and personal transformation among participants (Lerman & Sadin, 2022). Mount Tamalpais College’s graduates have gone on to four-year universities, graduate programs, journalism careers, advocacy work, leadership roles supporting successful reentry.

The economic case for this work is significant. California spends approximately $130,000 annually to incarcerate a single individual, and every graduate who does not return to prison represents both a transformed life and a measurable reduction in public expenditure. Yet even that calculation understates The College’s contribution. President Jody Lewen, who began as a graduate-student volunteer in 1999 and later received the McGraw Prize in Education, has long argued that the deepest value of higher education in prison lies in what it affirms about the people who receive it: the recognition, foundational to the College's mission, that every individual has the right to develop their own gifts. That commitment is what ACCJC accreditation made formally visible to the rest of higher education.

Mount Tamalpais College

The third institution is the youngest, the smallest in physical footprint, and the one whose educational philosophy most directly reframes the value question. Mount Tamalpais College (MTC) is the only accredited independent liberal arts college in the United States whose main campus sits inside a prison.

Located within San Quentin Rehabilitation Center in Marin County, California, MTC traces its roots to a small associate-degree program launched in 1996 by Patten University, a San Quentin administrator, and a University of California, Davis faculty member. The program had no budget and a volunteer faculty. It later became known as the Prison University Project and was awarded the National Humanities Medal by President Obama in 2016. It became Mount Tamalpais College in 2020, achieved ACCJC Candidate status that same year, and received Initial Accreditation in 2022.

Mount Tamalpais College charges no tuition and no fees. Its sole admission requirement is a high school diploma or GED, and the College does not screen applicants based on age, length of sentence, the offense for which they were convicted, or time remaining on their sentence.

Approximately 300 students are enrolled at any given time, with capacity recently increased through the construction of a new education complex at the prison. During the 2024-25 school year, 334 students took at least one of the College's courses. Since 1996, more than 4,300 students have taken at least one course through the program. The College offers an Associate of Arts in Liberal Arts and an intensive College Preparatory Program in math and writing.

The outcomes data are compelling. A 2012 program evaluation found drastically reduced recidivism rates among released MTC graduates. A 2018-19 study conducted by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley found measurable gains in students' civic orientation and self-efficacy, documenting both educational and personal transformation among participants (Lerman & Sadin, 2022). Mount Tamalpais College’s graduates have gone on to four-year universities, graduate programs, journalism careers, advocacy work, leadership roles supporting successful reentry.

The economic case for this work is significant. California spends approximately $130,000 annually to incarcerate a single individual, and every graduate who does not return to prison represents both a transformed life and a measurable reduction in public expenditure. Yet even that calculation understates The College’s contribution. President Jody Lewen, who began as a graduate-student volunteer in 1999 and later received the McGraw Prize in Education, has long argued that the deepest value of higher education in prison lies in what it affirms about the people who receive it: the recognition, foundational to the College's mission, that every individual has the right to develop their own gifts. That commitment is what ACCJC accreditation made formally visible to the rest of higher education.

A Broader Definition of Return

These three institutions look almost nothing like one another, but each challenges a narrow definition of value. None charges tuition or fees. Each is accredited by ACCJC under the same standards applied to the largest community colleges in California. Each produces outcomes in retention, completion, transfer, ordination, leadership development, and/or recidivism reduction that hold up against the strongest performers in American higher education. And each makes a case, in the particular shape of its mission, that the value of education is not always reducible to the years it takes to earn back tuition.

ACCJC's work around affordability and return-on-investment continue to demonstrate the economic value of our degrees and programs, but the work of CFOT, Deep Springs, and Mount Tamalpais points to something the broader public conversation about higher education has lost sight of in recent years: an accredited college can still be, at its best, an institution whose return is paid not only to its graduates, but also to the communities, the organizations, and the lives those graduates go on to serve.

A Broader Definition of Return

These three institutions look almost nothing like one another, but each challenges a narrow definition of value. None charges tuition or fees. Each is accredited by ACCJC under the same standards applied to the largest community colleges in California. Each produces outcomes in retention, completion, transfer, ordination, leadership development, and/or recidivism reduction that hold up against the strongest performers in American higher education. And each makes a case, in the particular shape of its mission, that the value of education is not always reducible to the years it takes to earn back tuition.

ACCJC's work around affordability and return-on-investment continue to demonstrate the economic value of our degrees and programs, but the work of CFOT, Deep Springs, and Mount Tamalpais points to something the broader public conversation about higher education has lost sight of in recent years: an accredited college can still be, at its best, an institution whose return is paid not only to its graduates, but also to the communities, the organizations, and the lives those graduates go on to serve.

This content was provided by the Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges. The editorial staff of The Chronicle had no role in its preparation. Find out more about paid content.