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

1 Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University-Daytona Beach · Daytona Beach · private +$2.54M
2 AdventHealth University · Orlando · private +$2.39M
3 Florida SouthWestern State College · Fort Myers · public +$1.98M
4 Florida State College at Jacksonville · Jacksonville · public +$1.93M
5 St Petersburg College · St. Petersburg · public +$1.82M
6 University of Florida · Gainesville · public +$1.75M
7 Everglades University · Boca Raton · private +$1.72M
8 Seminole State College of Florida · Sanford · public +$1.67M
9 Broward College · Fort Lauderdale · public +$1.64M
10 Florida National University-Main Campus · Hialeah · private +$1.58M
11 Florida Institute of Technology · Melbourne · private +$1.53M
12 Polk State College · Winter Haven · public +$1.50M
13 Palm Beach State College · Lake Worth · public +$1.50M
14 Santa Fe College · Gainesville · public +$1.43M
15 Miami Dade College · Miami · public +$1.27M

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

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