A decade or more ago, my points strategy was to gather them and use them to buy upgrades. These days, class of service upgrades require a copay (UA), so I'm wondering if anyone's crunched the math on subtracting copays from a paid upgrade cost and seeing what the value of the point is when compared to redeeming points for free tickets.

If I'm using a card to accumulating points for tickets, perhaps a MileagePlus point isn't the highest value point I could use to fly United metal. Or is it? In today's days of manufactured spending, perhaps my class of service strategy is the least valuable way to use my points? Or is that just on UA? Should some time to shop my routes to the other major carriers and see what value their points have as far as upgrades go?

EDIT:
The goals that I see are to get a value of 2c per TYP and that's best done by booking high end hotels or travel, not upgrades to travel or upgrades to club levels of hotels. Am I on the right track?