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The 10 best colleges for learning to code

PayScale
Cassidy Rush
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Student works on her laptop while sitting on the UC Berkeley campus.
Justin Sullivan | Getty Images

During the last few years, coding boot camps have been popping up all over the United States. The high demand is mostly due to students wanting a more streamlined approach to their education. And depending on what kind of program you enroll in, you could end up paying less, just as much, or perhaps more than you would at a regular university studying computer science.

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We aren't implying that one option is better than the other, but when you consider that enrollment in a university will provide you with the complementary soft skills most programmers and web developers lack, it's not a bad idea to consider and compare the costs of learning through a traditional university. To give you a jump start, PayScale crunched the numbers so you can see what colleges and universities currently offer the best value for their computer science programs. Spoiler alert: it helps to be on the West Coast.

1) University of California Berkeley

20-year net ROI: $1,113,000
Cost to attend: $136,000
Graduation rate: 91 percent
Average loan amount: $23,300

2) University of Washington

20-year net ROI: $1,050,000
Cost to attend: $107,000
Graduation rate: 84 percent
Average loan amount: $23,600

3) University of California San Diego

20-year net ROI: $1,045,000
Cost to attend: $123,000
Graduation rate: 86 percent
Average loan amount: $22,600

4) Georgia Institute of Technology

20- year net ROI: $999,000
Cost to attend: $96,200
Graduation rate: 82 percent
Average loan amount: $31,700

5) Brigham Young University

20-year net ROI: $966,000
Cost to attend: $70,500
Graduation rate: 79 percent
Average loan amount: $20,200

6) California Polytechnic State University

20-year net ROI: $947,000
Cost to attend: $98,300
Graduation rate: 75 percent
Average loan amount: $23,400

7) University of Virginia

20-year net ROI: $938,000
Cost to attend: $108,000
Graduation rate: 94 percent
Average loan amount: $29,300

8) University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

20-year net ROI: $936,000
Cost to attend: $117,000
Graduation rate: 84 percent
Average loan amount: $28,700

9) James Madison University

20-year net ROI: $905,000
Cost to attend: $93,400
Graduation rate: 82 percent
Average loan amount: $29,600

10) University of Delaware

20-year net ROI: $900,000
Cost to attend: $103,000
Graduation rate: 79 percent
Average loan amount: $34,400

The 10 best colleges for learning to code originally appeared on PayScale.

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