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

1 University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign · Champaign · public +$2.31M
2 DeVry University-Illinois · Lisle · private +$2.08M
3 Illinois Institute of Technology · Chicago · private +$2.08M
4 University of St Francis · Joliet · private +$1.44M
5 University of Chicago · Chicago · private +$1.43M
6 Illinois State University · Normal · public +$1.43M
7 Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville · Edwardsville · public +$1.40M
8 University of Illinois Chicago · Chicago · public +$1.37M
9 Northern Illinois University · Dekalb · public +$1.34M
10 Lewis University · Romeoville · private +$1.32M
11 University of Illinois Springfield · Springfield · public +$1.29M
12 Bradley University · Peoria · private +$1.23M
13 Trinity Christian College · Palos Heights · private +$1.22M
14 Southern Illinois University-Carbondale · Carbondale · public +$1.10M
15 Benedictine University · Lisle · private +$1.08M

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

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