The Brookings Institution takes a different approach, analyzing a college’s “value added,” which is the difference between actual earnings outcomes and the outcomes one would expect given a student’s characteristics and comparable colleges. The ideal approach would use a close approximation of a student’s actual total net price, including incidental expenses, and expected interest payments on the debt they would be borrowing to pay for college, but would exclude living expenses they would otherwise be paying if they didn’t attend college. Payscale and Third Way compare earnings to a high school graduate without a bachelor’s degree, and Brookings compares colleges against similar colleges.