FREOPP 2021 earnings · IPEDS 2023 cost · BEA 2023 cost-of-living · Arkansas four-year schools, resident pricing · real-earnings-coverage only · every school shown is NPV-positive.

1 University of Arkansas Grantham · LIttle Rock · public +$3.60M
2 University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences · Little Rock · public +$2.87M
3 University of Arkansas · Fayetteville · public +$2.22M
4 John Brown University · Siloam Springs · private +$1.86M
5 University of Arkansas at Little Rock · Little Rock · public +$1.72M
6 University of Arkansas-Fort Smith · Fort Smith · public +$1.32M
7 University of Arkansas at Monticello · Monticello · public +$1.28M
8 Southern Arkansas University Main Campus · Magnolia · public +$1.23M
9 Arkansas Tech University · Russellville · public +$1.06M
10 Arkansas State University · Jonesboro · public +$1.04M
11 University of Central Arkansas · Conway · public +$984K
12 Harding University · Searcy · private +$951K
13 Henderson State University · Arkadelphia · public +$556K
14 University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff · Pine Bluff · public +$365K
15 Philander Smith University · Little Rock · private +$292K

How this is computed (and what it isn’t)

For each school we run the /worth-it calculator with the home state set to Arkansas — resident tuition, plus foregone wages, capitalized loan interest, and BEA cost-of-living on the skip-college path. The ranking is the 30-year projected net value of going vs. skipping and investing the difference. It ranks schools, not majors — and the major you pick swings that payoff by over a million dollars on its own.

What it isn’t: a list of “good schools.” It’s a list of good trades at resident pricing. Schools without real FREOPP earnings coverage are excluded rather than estimated; institutions whose earnings roll up from fewer than 3 reported programs are excluded as too thin to rank; schools verified closed since the IPEDS 2023-24 vintage are excluded by hand. Only NPV-positive schools are listed — the point is where the value is, not naming losers.