Here's how much grads earn 10 years after attending the most expensive colleges in America

• Tuition and other expenses at top US colleges continue to rise.
• Using data from the Department of Education, we took a look at what the median student at the 20 most expensive colleges in the US earned 10 years after attending those schools.

College continues to get more expensive, especially at the top end of the scale, and it's worth looking at the return on investment for that enormous cost.

It turns out that many of the most expensive educations available in the US offer modest returns in terms of post-graduation salaries.

Using data from the Department of Education's College Scorecard, we found the average annual cost of attendance and median earnings for employed students 10 years after matriculation for four-year, primarily baccalaureate-granting institutions with at least 500 undergraduate students enrolled.

Here are the top 20 most expensive schools in the US, according to that measure, ranked by median earnings 10 years after first attendance:

Kathleen Elkins contributed to an earlier version of this article.