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

1 Marietta College · Marietta · private +$3.91M
2 Mercy College of Ohio · Toledo · private +$2.87M
3 Kettering College · Kettering · private +$2.81M
4 Franklin University · Columbus · private +$2.26M
5 Ohio Northern University · Ada · private +$2.05M
6 University of Toledo · Toledo · public +$2.04M
7 University of Cincinnati-Main Campus · Cincinnati · public +$1.97M
8 Ohio University-Main Campus · Athens · public +$1.96M
9 Ohio State University-Main Campus · Columbus · public +$1.93M
10 Miami University-Oxford · Oxford · public +$1.82M
11 University of Akron Main Campus · Akron · public +$1.71M
12 University of Dayton · Dayton · private +$1.56M
13 Wright State University-Main Campus · Dayton · public +$1.54M
14 Cedarville University · Cedarville · private +$1.29M
15 Case Western Reserve University · Cleveland · private +$1.28M

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

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