The decision to attend college deserves the same rigor as any other major financial commitment. The challenge is timing. The costs hit upfront, during enrollment. The benefits, to the extent they exist, accrue over a career that may span four decades. Comparing the two requires a method that accounts for the time value of money.

That method is discounted cash flow. You project every year of earnings and costs, discount each back to today’s dollars, and sum them into a Net Present Value. The option with the higher NPV is the better investment. A wage-premium snapshot at age 30 cannot capture this. NPV can.

Run it honestly, with foregone wages, costs, taxes, and discounting, and the result most families do not expect appears: the median college graduate, at the median American institution, generates a negative return. The book shows every step of that calculation and documents every assumption, so you can test it rather than take it on faith.

You do not have to build the spreadsheet yourself. The model does it for your specific school, field, and price.

This is Chapter 29 of the book. See the full model in the book, or run your own numbers now.

Read next: Is College Worth It? The argument in full, or is a college degree worth it in 2026? in this breakdown.