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

1 City University of Seattle · Seattle · private +$2.55M
2 DigiPen Institute of Technology · Redmond · private +$2.47M
3 Walla Walla University · College Place · private +$1.90M
4 University of Washington-Seattle Campus · Seattle · public +$1.82M
5 Washington State University · Pullman · public +$1.68M
6 Central Washington University · Ellensburg · public +$987K
7 Northwest University · Kirkland · private +$946K
8 Eastern Washington University · Cheney · public +$713K
9 Western Washington University · Bellingham · public +$448K
10 Seattle University · Seattle · private +$395K
11 Gonzaga University · Spokane · private +$250K
12 Seattle Pacific University · Seattle · private +$181K
13 Saint Martin's University · Lacey · private +$69K
14 Heritage University · Toppenish · private +$29K

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

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