degreeroi

What is a degree actually worth, in dollars, over a working life? degreeroi answers with data instead of brochure copy: lifetime return on investment for college majors, and 30-year net present value for the U.S. colleges where the maths clears a positive bar. It is a thin, read-only client for the LE TEEN College ROI API — static JSON, no key, no signup — exposed both as a small CLI and as a stdio MCP server from a single bin.

The major figures cover 19 categories and 115 CIP subfields: median and mean lifetime ROI, the share of graduates who never break even, the break-even age, and an AI-exposure band, with full distributions on the detail view. The college figures cover the 500 four-year schools that clear a positive-NPV envelope (out of roughly 1,656 U.S. four-years): what a degree is worth over 30 years to a resident and to a non-resident, what attendance costs, what graduates earn, and when the degree pays for itself. Every dollar figure is a lifetime / 30-year total in USD.

One consequence of the envelope is worth stating plainly: a school that is not in the 500 is not in the data. Asking for it returns a not-found, because absence is itself the signal — degreeroi never invents a record for a school the dataset leaves out.

Configuration

• COLLEGE_ROI_API_URL (optional) — API base URL. Defaults to https://le-teen.com/api.

That is all. There is no API key: the upstream API is free and keyless. Responses are cached in-process for 24 hours, matching the API's own CDN cache, and nothing is ever written back.

Related MCP server: college-roi-mcp

Tools

• list_majors — compact ROI rows for the major categories and subfields. Optional filters: kind (category or subfield), parent (the category a subfield belongs to), sort (median_roi, mean_roi, break_even_age or name) and limit. Only the filters you set are sent.

• get_major — the full record for one major: the ROI distribution (p25, median, mean, p75), completion-adjusted and dropout ROI, graduate and program counts, and the AI-exposure detail.

• search_colleges — search the 500 envelope colleges by name, state or control, with a limit. Rows carry resident and non-resident 30-year NPV, cost of attendance, median earnings and break-even age.

• get_college — the full record for one college, including its IPEDS unitid and FREOPP coverage. A college outside the envelope answers college not found: <college>.

• best_value_colleges — best-value four-years at resident pricing: the top 15 per state when a state is given (trim with limit), or a nationwide top-pick summary when it is not.

• out_of_state_penalty — public four-years ranked by how much 30-year NPV a non-resident gives up versus a resident; optionally narrow with state and limit.

• get_api_info — metadata for the underlying API: endpoints, licence, dataset DOI and attribution. Answered locally from the pinned metadata; it makes no upstream call.

Behaviour worth knowing:

• List tools pass the API's compact projections through unchanged; detail tools pass the full upstream record through unchanged.

• A non-2xx upstream reply fails with degreeroi error: HTTP <status> (except the detail tools' 404, which is the honest not-found above), and an unreachable API with degreeroi unreachable.

Endpoint provenance

The original project's README pins the seven tools, their semantics, the API base (https://le-teen.com/api, static JSON), the filter notions on list_majors (kind/parent, sort, limit) and on search_colleges (name/state/control), and the dataset facts (19 categories, 115 subfields, 500 envelope colleges, DOI 10.5281/zenodo.21351602, CC BY 4.0, LE TEEN at le-teen.com). It does not enumerate endpoint paths or parameter tables, so those are labelled reconstructions in this rebuild — one GET per networked tool under the API base:

• GET <base>/majors with only the set filters as query parameters (used by list_majors).

• GET <base>/majors/{major} (used by get_major).

• GET <base>/colleges with only the set filters as query parameters (used by search_colleges).

• GET <base>/colleges/{college} (used by get_college).

• GET <base>/best-value-colleges with state / limit when set (used by best_value_colleges).

• GET <base>/out-of-state-penalty with state / limit when set (used by out_of_state_penalty).

• get_api_info is served from the pinned metadata, with the endpoints as implemented above.

The major and college path segments are URL-encoded.

Data sources behind the API: FREOPP program-level estimates, IPEDS institutional data and BEA price deflators. Data licence CC BY 4.0 — cite LE TEEN, le-teen.com.

CLI

Each tool is a subcommand taking one JSON argument string:

npx @reneturcios/degreeroi list_majors '{"kind":"subfield","sort":"median_roi","limit":10}'
npx @reneturcios/degreeroi get_major '{"major":"computer-science"}'
npx @reneturcios/degreeroi search_colleges '{"state":"CA","control":"public"}'
npx @reneturcios/degreeroi get_college '{"college":"example-state-university"}'
npx @reneturcios/degreeroi best_value_colleges '{"state":"CA"}'
npx @reneturcios/degreeroi out_of_state_penalty '{"limit":20}'
npx @reneturcios/degreeroi get_api_info '{}'
npx @reneturcios/degreeroi --version

Output is the tool's result text (the upstream body on success). Exit codes: 0 on success, 1 on a runtime error, 2 on a usage error.

MCP server

npx -y @reneturcios/degreeroi mcp

MCP client config:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "degreeroi": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@reneturcios/degreeroi", "mcp"]
    }
  }
}

Docker

docker run -i ghcr.io/cloudcorprecords/degreeroi
docker run --rm ghcr.io/cloudcorprecords/degreeroi get_api_info '{}'

Development

npm install
npm run build   # tsc -> dist/
npm test        # tsx --test test/*.test.ts (fake fetch only, no network)
npm run dev     # run the CLI from source

License

MIT — Copyright (c) 2026 Rene Turcios

The data served by the upstream API is CC BY 4.0 (LE TEEN, le-teen.com; dataset DOI 10.5281/zenodo.21351602).