WORTH-IT · TOOL 001
Is your dream school worth it?
Pick your school. We run thirty years of paying for it against skipping it and investing the difference — on the colleges’ own reported numbers: FREOPP earnings, IPEDS cost, BEA cost-of-living. No villains, no prescriptions, just the math.
for teens 15-19 · + the parent reading over their shoulder
For University of California-Los Angeles · home California (CA), in-state · 4-year program
Net present value · 30 years · today's dollars
$663,955
University of California-Los Angeles pays back $663,955 over 30 years.
The math says: yes.
Under the number
Foregone wages, compounded — upper bound
$1.15M
What four years of HS-grad wages ($34,000/yr) would grow to at 7.0% real over 30 years, if you saved every dollar. It’s the ceiling, not the typical case — real savings run 5–15%, so divide by roughly ten for what you’d actually keep. We show the ceiling on purpose.
- Sticker cost (before aid)
- $123,580
- Loan financing
- 60% of cost
- Loan APR
- 6.50%
- Career horizon
- 30 years
- Alt-investment return
- 7.0% real
- HS-grad wage anchor
- $34,000/yr
- Residency
- in-state
- Cost-of-living (BEA RPP)
- 112.2
Median outcome for University of California-Los Angeles — FREOPP 2021 earnings, IPEDS 2023-24 cost, BEA 2023 cost-of-living. The assumptions above are editable defaults; change the school or state to re-run. Your number will vary.
Common questions
What does this calculator measure?
30-year net present value: degree-path cash flow (cost + foregone wages, both compounded forward) against the alt-path (HS-grad wages invested at the S&P 500 long-run average). Both ends use the same real-rate convention. The headline is the difference in 2055 dollars.
Where does the data come from?
IPEDS 2023-24 for sticker cost across 3,392 institutions. FREOPP 2021 for institution-level median earnings (covers ~49% of the universe; the rest fall back to the BLS national bachelor’s median, $74K). BEA 2023 Regional Price Parity for cost-of-living adjustment by state. All public, all citable inline.
Why does my school’s NPV differ from sticker price?
Sticker is gross. The calculator nets out four things: (1) financial-aid-adjusted attendance, (2) capitalized in-school interest, (3) foregone wages while enrolled, (4) cost-of-living adjustment for the state you’ll work in. The biggest swing is usually foregone wages — four years of HS-grad earnings compounded over a 40-year career runs into the six-figure range on its own.
What counts as a “good” NPV?
Positive. Above zero means the degree path beats the alt-path under these assumptions. The interesting question isn’t yes-or-no — it’s by how much, and whether changing one input you control (school, in-state vs out, financing percentage, where you’ll work) flips the sign.