COLLEGE ROI CALCULATOR · 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
Projected net value · by 2060 · real dollars
$663,955
University of California-Los Angeles pays back $663,955 over 30 years.
The math says: yes.
Same school — the residency line moves this number by $1.05M — and flips the verdict.
What this college ROI calculator actually computes
Most college ROI calculators multiply median earnings by a career length and subtract tuition. That overstates every school, because it counts neither the wages you gave up to attend nor what those wages would have earned if invested. This one runs the 30-year net present value of attending against skipping and investing the difference, on 30 years at 7.0% real. The receipts are below.
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 projected net 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 that difference, accumulated over the horizon and expressed in real dollars (constant purchasing power, not inflated to future-year 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.