college-roi-mcp

MCP server for U.S. college-ROI data: 30-year net present value (NPV) for 500 four-year colleges, lifetime ROI for 19 major categories + 115 CIP subfields, per-state best-value rankings, and the out-of-state tuition penalty ranking.

Wraps the free, keyless LE TEEN College ROI API (static JSON, CC BY 4.0). No API key, no signup, no rate limits beyond CDN sanity. Data derives from FREOPP program-level ROI estimates, IPEDS institutional data, and BEA price deflators — methodology at le-teen.com/methodology. Dataset DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.21351602.

Install

Requires Node ≥ 18.

Claude Desktop / Claude Code (claude_desktop_config.json or .mcp.json):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "college-roi": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "college-roi-mcp"]
    }
  }
}

Claude Code CLI:

claude mcp add college-roi -- npx -y college-roi-mcp

Any other MCP client: run npx -y college-roi-mcp over stdio.

Tools

Tool	What it returns
list_majors	Compact ROI rows for 19 categories / 115 subfields — median & mean lifetime ROI, % never break even, break-even age, AI-exposure band. Filter by kind/parent, sort, limit.
get_major	Full record for one major: ROI distribution (p25/median/mean/p75), completion-adjusted & dropout ROI, graduates/programs, AI-exposure detail.
search_colleges	Search the 500 positive-NPV-envelope colleges by name/state/control — resident & non-resident 30-yr NPV, cost of attendance, median earnings, break-even age.
get_college	Full record for one college, incl. IPEDS unitid and FREOPP coverage.
best_value_colleges	Each state's best-value four-years at resident pricing (top 15 per state), or a nationwide top-pick summary.
out_of_state_penalty	Public four-years ranked by how much 30-yr NPV a non-resident gives up vs a resident.
get_api_info	Metadata for the underlying API: endpoints, license, DOI, attribution.

All dollar figures are lifetime/30-year totals in USD. List responses are compact projections with limit controls so they stay small in agent contexts; detail tools return the full upstream record.

Note the envelope: only colleges that clear a positive-NPV bar appear (500 of ~1,656 U.S. four-years). A school being absent is itself a signal.

Example prompts

• "Is a nursing degree worth it compared to computer science?"
• "Best-value colleges in Michigan for a resident."
• "How much does going out-of-state to UVA cost me over 30 years?"
• "Which majors have the worst odds of ever breaking even?"

Data freshness & caching

The upstream API is static JSON regenerated with the dataset; this server caches responses in-process for 24 h (matching the API's CDN cache). Nothing is written anywhere; the server is read-only.

License & attribution

• Code: MIT.
• Data: CC BY 4.0 — free to use with attribution. Cite LE TEEN, le-teen.com (and FREOPP/IPEDS/BEA as upstream sources).