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

1 Bryant University · Smithfield · private +$2.03M
2 New England Institute of Technology · East Greenwich · private +$1.64M
3 Brown University · Providence · private +$1.38M
4 University of Rhode Island · Kingston · public +$1.21M
5 Rhode Island College · Providence · public +$1.01M
6 Roger Williams University · Bristol · private +$790K
7 Providence College · Providence · private +$486K
8 Salve Regina University · Newport · private +$163K

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

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