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

1 Montana Technological University · Butte · public +$5.27M
2 University of Providence · Great Falls · private +$2.82M
3 Montana State University-Northern · Havre · public +$2.11M
4 Montana State University · Bozeman · public +$1.58M
5 Montana State University Billings · Billings · public +$1.08M
6 The University of Montana-Western · Dillon · public +$811K
7 Rocky Mountain College · Billings · private +$625K
8 The University of Montana · Missoula · public +$292K

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

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