The numbers schools don't put on the brochure.
Earnings, debt, completion, and default — for every Title-IV institution and every program where the federal government publishes outcomes. Sourced from College Scorecard, IPEDS, and Treasury tax records. 2019 reporting year.
Outcomes, At Every Scale
Federal outcome data lives at different scales because the questions do. Pick the ranking that matches what you actually want to know — institutions, programs, or states.
Colleges by Outcomes
Title-IV institutions ranked on earnings 10y after entry, 150%-time completion, median debt, default rate, admission rate, and Pell share. Filtered to 1,000+ undergrads so specialty institutes don't dominate the extremes.
Majors by What They Pay
CIP × credential programs ranked by median earnings 5 years after completion, plus median debt and largest cohorts. Same federal data, same horizon, same suppression rules across schools.
States by Median Outcome
All 52 states (plus DC and Puerto Rico) ranked by statewide median earnings, completion, debt, and Pell share — useful when the question is geographic, not institutional.
Four Principles For Federal College Data
The federal data is rich, public, and underused outside compliance offices. We built this so the analytics-and-narrative layer most people actually need is one URL away — without the marketing layer schools paint over it.
Trend, not totals
Earnings cohorts move slowly. We surface 4-to-29-year long-arc shifts in completion, enrollment, and tuition — not just last year's number.
Descriptive, not causal
Selection effects (who enrolls, who completes, what fields they pick) drive most cross-school variation. We publish the federal data; we don't tell you which school to attend.
Federal-only sources
College Scorecard for Treasury earnings + Field-of-Study, IPEDS HD for institutional structure, FSA for default rate. All public-domain, all reproducible from the methodology page.
Methodology open
Every metric, every cohort definition, every suppression rule is on the methodology page. Read the rules; reproduce the numbers.
Three Signals Worth A Read
One row from each of three ranking tables — pulled live from this update so the homepage tracks the data, not a hand-picked story.
MIT
Highest median earnings 10 years after first enrollment among Title-IV institutions with 1,000+ undergrads. Treasury IRS cohort; selection effects drive most of the gap.
Open the pageIndian Capital Technology Center-Muskogee
Highest 150%-time completion rate. IPEDS first-time, full-time entering cohort; institutions enrolling 1,000+ undergrads only.
Open the pageFinance and Financial Management Services · Penn
Master's Degree at Penn, with the highest median earnings 5 years after completion. College Scorecard Field-of-Study; 303 completers in the cohort.
Open the pageDescriptive numbers. Not causal claims.
Earnings are median tax-record earningsfor federally aided students, 4–10 years after first enrollment. The cohort includes non-completers and people who left the state. Selection bias is real — high-earning programs often attract higher-earning students. We publish the federal data as it is, with the caveats it deserves. We don't tell you which school to go to.
Federal college outcomes, with the analytics layer already done.
Free. No accounts. No tracking. Built on public-domain federal data.