Methodology: Sources, Definitions and Suppression Rules
Sources
Institution data: U.S. Department of Education College Scorecard, file Most-Recent-Cohorts-Institution.csv, from the October 15, 2026 release (Most-Recent-Cohorts files, data vintage as published in that release), retrieved October 25, 2026 from collegescorecard.ed.gov/data/. Field-of-study data: Most-Recent-Cohorts-Field-of-Study.csv from the same release and retrieval. The College Scorecard itself draws institution characteristics and completion from IPEDS reporting and earnings and debt from federal financial-aid and tax records, linked under the Department's published privacy and disclosure rules. No API key or application programming interface was used for this site; the downloadable public files are the entire source, so any reader can download the same files and reproduce every figure published here.
Institution fields used
Profiles use: INSTNM, CITY and STABBR for identity and location; CONTROL for sector (public, private nonprofit, private for-profit); PREDDEG to identify predominantly bachelor's institutions for benchmarking; UGDS for undergraduate enrolment; ADM_RATE for admission rate; C150_4 for completion within 150 percent of normal time; COSTT4_A or COSTT4_P for cost of attendance; TUITIONFEE_IN and TUITIONFEE_OUT for tuition; NPT4_PUB or NPT4_PRIV for average net price; MD_EARN_WNE_P10 and MD_EARN_WNE_P6 for median earnings ten and six years after entry; GRAD_DEBT_MDN for median graduate debt and DEBT_MDN for median debt across all students; and RPY_3YR_RT for the three-year repayment rate. Benchmarks are medians calculated across institutions reporting earnings, graduate debt and completion together.
Field-of-study fields used
Field pages use bachelor's programmes (CREDDESC) identified by CIPCODE and CIPDESC, earnings EARN_MDN_4YR (median earnings at the four-year measurement point in that file), debt DEBT_ALL_STGP_ANY_MDN, and graduate counts IPEDSCOUNT1 for minimum-count filtering. Programme medians quoted as field medians are medians across programmes reporting both earnings and debt — a median of programme medians, unweighted by programme size, and labelled as such. The field file contains no completion-by-programme measure, and none is presented anywhere on this site.
The earnings cohort caveat
Earnings figures describe students who received federal financial aid, were not enrolled at the measurement point, and were working, with earnings observed in federal records. They exclude students who never received federal aid and students who had returned to education. They are medians for historical cohorts, stated in the release's terms, and they are not starting salaries, alumni averages or forecasts. Every profile and field page on this site carries this caveat in substance, because a figure quoted without its population is a different — and usually larger-sounding — figure in the reader's mind.
Suppression and missing data
The source files suppress values where cohorts are small, using markers including PrivacySuppressed, PS and blank or NA entries depending on the file and field. This site treats every such marker as missing: the value is omitted, the absence is stated where a reader would expect the figure, and no estimate, interpolation or neighbouring value is substituted. Institutions lacking earnings, graduate debt or completion in the release were excluded from the launch profiles rather than published with gaps in the headline triad. Readers should interpret absence as a reporting fact — small cohort, new programme, non-reporting — and not as a zero or a judgement.
Selection of the launch edition
The 125 profiled institutions combine the largest predominantly bachelor's institutions in the release by undergraduate enrolment with a named set of widely recognised research universities and colleges included for reader demand regardless of size, all required to report the full headline triad. The 32 fields are the bachelor's CIP fields with the most programmes reporting both earnings and debt. Selection is editorial and finite; absence from this edition is not an assessment of any institution or field, and later editions can widen coverage from the same published files without changing any definition on this page.
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.