About CollegeROIData

Why federal college ROI data deserves a public-facing home

The U.S. Department of Education College Scorecard is the federal record of college cost, debt, completion, and post-graduation earnings outcomes. Every covered institution reports total cost of attendance, student-loan debt levels at graduation, completion rates by demographic, and median earnings of graduates 1, 4, 6, and 10 years after entry. The data is comprehensive, free, and updated annually.

The presentation problem is the usual one: the federal portal is built for state higher-education agency analysts, and the underlying data files run to gigabytes. A prospective student weighing whether a $40,000-per-year degree pays back, a parent comparing two state-university options, or a journalist investigating debt-to-earnings ratios at for-profit institutions needs the same data presented per-school, per-program, and per-state without a CSV download. CollegeROIData builds that layer. Every school page consolidates the Scorecard record for that institution; every state page rolls up the institutions in the state.

How the pipeline pulls Scorecard data

The pipeline pulls from the College Scorecard public API on the annual release cadence — typically a fall update covering the most recent reported cohort. The Scorecard release schedule is staggered because each metric has a different reporting lag: cost of attendance updates roughly annually; earnings outcomes carry a 4-6 year reporting lag because earnings are measured 1, 4, 6, and 10 years after entry. The site stamps the as-of date on every value so readers know which cohort year each figure reflects.

A practical detail: median earnings figures are post-tax, post-transfer wage records sourced from federal IRS tax filings linked to the Scorecard via SSN matching, with privacy suppression on small cohorts. For a school with a graduating class of 30 students in a particular program, several earnings fields can be suppressed; the page shows the institution-level aggregate where the program-level value is suppressed.

Where college ROI data has caveats

Three caveats. First, post-graduation earnings reflect the labor market at the time the cohort entered the workforce — not the current labor market. A graduate who entered the workforce in 2014 reports earnings against a different economy than a 2024 graduate would. The site notes the cohort year explicitly on every earnings figure.

Second, debt levels at graduation undercount total debt because the Scorecard reports only federal student-loan debt. Private student loans (about 8-10 percent of student debt by volume) and Parent PLUS loans are reported separately or not at all in the headline debt figure. The pages note this and link to the methodology page where the gap is explained.

Third, completion rates are calculated on first-time, full-time entrants only — which can undercount completion at institutions that serve substantial transfer or part-time populations. Community colleges and many state universities have higher real completion when transfer-in students are included than the Scorecard’s first-time-full-time figure suggests. Every figure links back to the originating Scorecard record.