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

1 Rice University · Houston · private +$2.89M
2 The University of Texas at Arlington · Arlington · public +$2.72M
3 The University of Texas Permian Basin · Odessa · public +$2.63M
4 Southwestern Adventist University · Keene · private +$2.63M
5 Texas A & M University-College Station · College Station · public +$2.54M
6 The University of Texas at Austin · Austin · public +$2.51M
7 Texas Tech University · Lubbock · public +$2.24M
8 University of Houston · Houston · public +$2.14M
9 Lamar University · Beaumont · public +$2.09M
10 University of Houston-Downtown · Houston · public +$2.03M
11 University of Houston-Clear Lake · Houston · public +$2.01M
12 Midwestern State University · Wichita Falls · public +$2.00M
13 The University of Texas at Dallas · Richardson · public +$1.92M
14 Prairie View A & M University · Prairie View · public +$1.90M
15 University of Houston-Victoria · Victoria · public +$1.88M

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

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