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

1 Baptist Health Sciences University · Memphis · private +$2.81M
2 Bethel University · McKenzie · private +$2.20M
3 The University of Tennessee Health Science Center · Memphis · public +$2.15M
4 Cumberland University · Lebanon · private +$1.60M
5 Vanderbilt University · Nashville · private +$1.49M
6 Trevecca Nazarene University · Nashville · private +$1.46M
7 Tennessee Technological University · Cookeville · public +$1.37M
8 The University of Tennessee-Knoxville · Knoxville · public +$1.34M
9 Southern Adventist University · Collegedale · private +$1.34M
10 The University of Tennessee Southern · Pulaski · public +$1.24M
11 Union University · Jackson · private +$1.21M
12 The University of Tennessee-Chattanooga · Chattanooga · public +$1.13M
13 Christian Brothers University · Memphis · private +$1.09M
14 University of Memphis · Memphis · public +$1.09M
15 Middle Tennessee State University · Murfreesboro · public +$949K

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

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