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

1 Oregon Institute of Technology · Klamath Falls · public +$3.77M
2 Linfield University · McMinnville · private +$2.43M
3 Oregon State University · Corvallis · public +$1.20M
4 Warner Pacific University · Portland · private +$996K
5 University of Portland · Portland · private +$980K
6 George Fox University · Newberg · private +$876K
7 Portland State University · Portland · public +$807K
8 Eastern Oregon University · La Grande · public +$642K
9 Western Oregon University · Monmouth · public +$352K
10 University of Oregon · Eugene · public +$285K

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

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