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

1 Massachusetts Institute of Technology · Cambridge · private +$5.63M
2 Massachusetts Maritime Academy · Buzzards Bay · public +$5.27M
3 Franklin W Olin College of Engineering · Needham · private +$4.03M
4 Wentworth Institute of Technology · Boston · private +$3.41M
5 Worcester Polytechnic Institute · Worcester · private +$2.99M
6 Harvard University · Cambridge · private +$2.84M
7 Anna Maria College · Paxton · private +$2.81M
8 Bentley University · Waltham · private +$2.61M
9 University of Massachusetts-Lowell · Lowell · public +$1.69M
10 Northeastern University · Boston · private +$1.62M
11 Amherst College · Amherst · private +$1.44M
12 University of Massachusetts-Amherst · Amherst · public +$1.37M
13 University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth · North Dartmouth · public +$1.34M
14 MCPHS University · Boston · private +$1.34M
15 Boston College · Chestnut Hill · private +$1.33M

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

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