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

1 Colorado School of Mines · Golden · public +$4.84M
2 Colorado State University Global · Aurora · public +$3.53M
3 Colorado Technical University-Colorado Springs · Colorado Springs · private +$1.74M
4 University of Colorado Denver/Anschutz Medical Campus · Denver · public +$1.54M
5 University of Colorado Boulder · Boulder · public +$1.35M
6 Metropolitan State University of Denver · Denver · public +$1.23M
7 Regis University · Denver · private +$1.20M
8 Colorado Christian University · Lakewood · private +$1.15M
9 University of Colorado Colorado Springs · Colorado Springs · public +$1.01M
10 Colorado State University-Fort Collins · Fort Collins · public +$984K
11 Colorado State University Pueblo · Pueblo · public +$976K
12 Colorado Mountain College · Glenwood Springs · public +$952K
13 Colorado Mesa University · Grand Junction · public +$935K
14 Adams State University · Alamosa · public +$561K
15 University of Northern Colorado · Greeley · public +$558K

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

For each school we run the /worth-it calculator with the home state set to Colorado — 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.