Best College Value in Kansas: Top ROI Schools (2026)

Most states make you choose between the best school and an attainable one. Kansas does not.

We score 24 institutions in Kansas. The University of Kansas tops the board at an ROI of 76, and it admits 93.5% of the students who apply. That combination is rare. In most states the best-value campus is also a selectivity filter, so the ranking doubles as a list of places many families cannot count on. In Kansas the top of the table is close to open.

The complication sits one row down, and then a few rows below that. The two schools whose graduates earn the most in Kansas are not KU and Kansas State. They are Baker University and MidAmerica Nazarene, both small privates, and both are beaten on ROI anyway. And underneath the whole board is the number that actually decides most Kansas outcomes: 14 of the 24 schools we score complete fewer than half their students.

The Top Value Schools in Kansas

We score every school on net price (what families actually pay after aid, not sticker), median earnings ten years out, completion rate, and debt load. Here is how Kansas stacks up.

1. University of Kansas - ROI 76. Net price $18,059, median earnings $61,945, 68.8% completion, 93.5% admit rate, median debt $21,000. The flagship in Lawrence, and the best all-around bet in the state on every axis at once: highest earnings among the publics, lowest payback at 7.9 years, and a completion rate second only to K-State among traditional campuses. The admit rate is the part worth pausing on. A 93.5% acceptance rate at the school with the state's best ROI means the Kansas value question is rarely "can I get in" and almost always "will I finish".

1. Kansas State University - ROI 69. Net price $19,406, median earnings $57,262, 71.1% completion, 81.7% admit rate, median debt $21,250, payback 9.8 years. Manhattan, and the state's best completion rate among traditional schools at 71.1%. K-State trails KU on ROI for a simple reason: it costs $1,347 more a year and its graduates earn $4,683 less. But it graduates a higher share of the students who enroll, and in a state where completion is the dominant risk, that is not a small thing.

1. Baker University - ROI 65. Net price $25,301, median earnings $63,855, 57.8% completion, 94.2% admit rate, median debt $25,000, payback 8.4 years. Baldwin City, and the earnings leader of Kansas: Baker graduates out-earn KU's by $1,910 a year and every other school in the state by more. The case against is the $25,301 net price, $7,242 a year above KU, and a completion rate that trails both publics. It is the strongest private value in Kansas and the clearest example of the state's central trade.

1. MidAmerica Nazarene University - ROI 62. Net price $32,165, median earnings $62,972, 53.6% completion, 78.8% admit rate, median debt $15,000, payback 9.6 years. Olathe, second-highest earnings in the state, and the lowest median debt of any school in the top ten at $15,000. The price is the problem: $32,165 net is the second-highest in Kansas, and just over half of enrolled students finish.

1. University of Saint Mary - ROI 58. Net price $22,519, median earnings $59,483, 47.8% completion, 86.6% admit rate, median debt $22,018, payback 9.4 years. Leavenworth. Third-best earnings in the state, a competitive payback, and a completion rate under half, which is what holds the score down.

1. Wichita State University - ROI 57. Net price $13,194, median earnings $51,532, 51.0% completion, 94.0% admit rate, median debt $20,500, payback 11.7 years. The price play among the big publics: $4,865 a year cheaper than KU, in the state's largest city, with a strong engineering and applied-science identity. Earnings are $10,413 below KU's and completion is 51.0%, which stretches payback to 11.7 years. Cheap is not the same as fast.

1. Newman University - ROI 55. Net price $19,971, median earnings $55,041, 52.8% completion, 74.0% admit rate, median debt $20,801. Wichita, and the rare Kansas private priced close to public rates. Earnings sit above every public except KU.

1. Fort Hays State University - ROI 52. Net price $12,569, median earnings $48,928, 47.7% completion, 90.3% admit rate, median debt $21,000, payback 13.7 years. The cheapest public in Kansas, and a well-known online and distance program. The $12,569 net price is genuinely low; the 47.7% completion rate and 13.7-year payback are what you are accepting in exchange.

1. Washburn University - ROI 51. Net price $15,280, median earnings $49,774, 53.0% completion, median debt $18,127, payback 13.6 years. Topeka, municipally affiliated, with the second-lowest debt load among the publics.

1. Cleveland University-Kansas City - ROI 50. Net price $35,764, median earnings $52,304, 100% completion, 69.2% admit rate, median debt $12,500, payback 16.4 years. The anomaly on the board. A 100% completion rate is not a general-education result; Cleveland is a chiropractic and health-sciences institution whose students arrive with prior coursework and a single professional track. Read that number as a statement about who enrolls, not about how forgiving the school is. The $35,764 net price is the highest in Kansas.

The Real Kansas Story Is Completion

Fourteen of the 24 schools we score in Kansas complete fewer than half the students who enroll. Only four clear 60%, and one of those four is Cleveland, whose 100% figure reflects a professional cohort rather than a four-year undergraduate class. Strip that out and Kansas has exactly three schools that finish more than 60% of their students: Kansas State at 71.1%, the University of Kansas at 68.8%, and Benedictine College at 61.6%.

This is the number that should drive a Kansas decision, and it is the one families look at least. A cheap degree you do not finish is not a cheap degree. It is debt with no credential attached, which is the single worst outcome in the whole dataset, and it is why the payback figures stretch so far down the Kansas board: 13.7 years at Fort Hays, 16.3 at Emporia State, 17.1 at Bethany and Manhattan Christian, 21.2 at Sterling.

The bottom of the table makes the point without any interpretation. Barclay College scores 10, on a $29,290 net price against median earnings of $36,355 and a 32.3% completion rate, which produces a computed payback of 189.8 years. That figure is not a typo and it is not really a prediction. It is what the arithmetic returns when price is high, earnings are low, and most students never finish.

Public or Private in Kansas

The honest answer is that the publics win, but not by the margin the sticker prices suggest.

Kansas has six public institutions, and they rank KU 76, Kansas State 69, Wichita State 57, Fort Hays 52, Washburn 51, and Emporia State 44. That spread is wide. The gap between KU and Emporia State is larger than the gap between KU and most of the private field, so "go public" is not by itself a strategy in this state.

On the private side, Baker at 65 and MidAmerica Nazarene at 62 both slot above four of the six publics. Both out-earn every public including KU. What sinks them relative to KU is price plus completion, in that order, and both of those are things a specific student can reason about. If you are confident you will finish and the program is a fit, Baker's earnings advantage is real money. If you are not confident you will finish, the private premium is the most expensive way to find out.

For the wider comparison, our state school versus private ROI breakdown runs the same math across the country, and the public school ROI rankings show where the Kansas publics land nationally.

What To Do With This

Start with the full Kansas school table, which carries all 24 schools with the underlying figures rather than the ten summarized here. If KU and Kansas State are your real choice, the completion gap and the earnings gap point in opposite directions, and which one matters more is a question about you rather than about the schools.

Then run your own numbers. Net price varies enormously by family income, and the state-level figure above is an average across all income bands. Every school's own net price calculator will give you a number specific to your situation, and our ROI calculator will turn that number into a payback period you can actually compare.

The data is clear: geography matters. Check state-by-state school listings and the public school ROI rankings to see exactly how your state stacks up. For neighboring and comparable states, see our breakdowns for Missouri (Mizzou, WashU, and SLU), Colorado (the Colorado School of Mines engineering value), Iowa (Grinnell, Iowa State, and Drake), Nebraska's neighbor Minnesota (UMN Twin Cities and Carleton), and Arkansas, where the Fayetteville flagship and its own online campus tie at the top and no other public clears an ROI of 40. The states where the flagship is not the best value are the most instructive of all: see Oregon (where the University of Oregon ranks 7th in its own state), Maine (where a public maritime academy out-earns Bowdoin and Colby), Louisiana (LSU versus Louisiana Tech at $7,287 a year less), and Alabama (where the University of Alabama ranks fourth in its own state). For states we have not broken down editorially yet, the state tables carry the same data. Then run the numbers. A six-figure decision deserves a spreadsheet, not a gut feeling.

Data from College Board, IPEDS, state higher education agencies, and the U.S. Department of Education College Scorecard. Tuition figures reflect 2024-25 academic year. All figures as of March 2026.