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

1 Duke University · Durham · private +$2.75M
2 North Carolina State University at Raleigh · Raleigh · public +$2.22M
3 University of North Carolina at Charlotte · Charlotte · public +$1.65M
4 University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill · Chapel Hill · public +$1.59M
5 East Carolina University · Greenville · public +$1.45M
6 Winston-Salem State University · Winston-Salem · public +$1.41M
7 North Carolina A & T State University · Greensboro · public +$1.23M
8 Western Carolina University · Cullowhee · public +$1.03M
9 Fayetteville State University · Fayetteville · public +$1.03M
10 Elon University · Elon · private +$1.02M
11 University of North Carolina Wilmington · Wilmington · public +$974K
12 Wake Forest University · Winston-Salem · private +$938K
13 Appalachian State University · Boone · public +$803K
14 University of Mount Olive · Mount Olive · private +$793K
15 University of North Carolina at Greensboro · Greensboro · public +$775K

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

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