Learn: Reading College Outcomes Data Honestly
Every number in American college marketing arrives with a definition attached, whether the marketer mentions it or not. A starting salary might describe survey respondents from one graduating class, self-reported, with the unemployed and the silent left out. A graduation rate might describe only full-time students who started and finished at the same college. An average debt figure might include or exclude parents' loans, private loans, or students who never graduated — each choice large enough to change the story. The Learn section exists because College Outcomes Data asks you to trust federal figures over brochure figures, and that request is only reasonable if we show you, measure by measure, exactly what the federal figures are: who is counted, who is not, over what period, and under what rules.
The Learn section explains the definitions behind every figure on College Outcomes Data, in plain language, so you can use the profiles and field pages without taking any number on faith. Start with how Scorecard earnings are measured and why earnings cover only federal-aid recipients if the headline figures are new to you; those two articles define the population, the cohort and the median that everything else is built on. Read them in order if you can: earnings first, because it is the figure everyone quotes; its population second, because it is the qualification everyone omits; and the rest in whatever order your own decision raises them.
A note on how to use these guides while you compare colleges in practice. Keep one profile open beside the article you are reading, and test every definition against that college's actual figures: find the earnings number and ask whose earnings they are; find the completion rate and ask which cohort and which deadline produced it; find the debt figure and ask which borrowers it includes. Definitions learned in the abstract fade quickly, while definitions applied three times to real colleges become a permanent reading skill — one that transfers to every viewbook, ranking and advertisement you will ever be shown, including the claims of sites less careful than this one about stating what their numbers mean.
Then read what completion rates mean, because completion gates every outcome that follows, and how to compare debt against earnings, which gives you the ratio and the decision rule our profiles are organised around. Net price versus sticker price covers the two prices of college and why graduate debt audits both of them, while admission rates explained separates selectivity as logistics from selectivity as marketing.
Finally, field-of-study earnings explained shows how programme-level figures unblend a college's average — including the honest gap where completion by major simply is not published — and repayment rates explained covers the outcome colleges mention least: whether borrowers actually get ahead of their loans. Every article states its definitions, its limits and the follow-up questions worth asking a college, because a statistic you understand is worth more than a ranking you merely believe.
Note on this data: Figures on this page come from the U.S. Department of Education College Scorecard release retrieved in October 2026. Earnings cover students who received federal financial aid and were working and not enrolled at the measurement point; they are medians for a defined past cohort, not a promise of what any individual graduate will earn. Check the college and the Scorecard for the most current figures before you decide.