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

1 Yale University · New Haven · private +$2.34M
2 Goodwin University · East Hartford · private +$2.15M
3 Charter Oak State College · New Britain · public +$2.08M
4 University of Saint Joseph · West Hartford · private +$1.97M
5 Post University · Waterbury · private +$1.59M
6 University of Connecticut · Storrs · public +$1.55M
7 Central Connecticut State University · New Britain · public +$1.50M
8 Fairfield University · Fairfield · private +$1.39M
9 Western Connecticut State University · Danbury · public +$975K
10 Trinity College · Hartford · private +$819K
11 Quinnipiac University · Hamden · private +$650K
12 Southern Connecticut State University · New Haven · public +$622K
13 Sacred Heart University · Fairfield · private +$558K
14 Albertus Magnus College · New Haven · private +$534K
15 Eastern Connecticut State University · Willimantic · public +$429K

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

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