Giving Compass' Take:

• Natalie Schwartz discusses how liberal arts colleges offer relatively high long-term gains although initial returns are low.

• Do more education donors support liberal arts education over other universities? 

• Here's how liberal arts colleges can help students develop soft skills for future workforce. 

Liberal arts colleges offer the third-highest long-term returns of all 14 institution types outlined by the Carnegie Classification system. Only doctoral universities with the two highest research activity levels ranked higher, the report found.

"As with many four-year institutions, financial returns from liberal arts colleges start low, but enrolling at one of these colleges is a good investment in the long term," Anthony Carnevale, director of the Georgetown CEW, said in a statement.

That's not true for all liberal arts colleges. Some have long-term returns of less than $550,000, well under the median, the report points out.

And institutions with similar student demographics can yield vastly different returns. Oberlin College, where nearly 9% of students are Pell Grant recipients, has a 40-year return on investment of $763,000. Meanwhile, Washington and Lee University, which has about the same share of Pell students, delivers a return of $1.58 million, the report found.

Colleges with higher shares of students majoring in STEM disciplines also tend to have higher returns. "[T]he old rules still apply," Martin Van Der Werf, co-author of the report and associate director of editorial and postsecondary policy at Georgetown CEW, said in a statement. "Where students go to school, and what they major in, matters more than just about anything else."

Read the full article about liberal arts college by Natalie Schwartz at Education Dive.