Our Mission

We believe that choosing a college is one of the most consequential financial decisions a person can make, yet the information needed to make that choice wisely is scattered across government databases, institutional marketing materials, and paywalled research tools. PlainCollege exists to change that.

Our philosophy is straightforward: every prospective student, parent, and counselor deserves free, unbiased access to the same outcome data that researchers and policymakers use. We built PlainCollege because transparency about graduation rates, post-graduation earnings, and student debt should not be a privilege reserved for those who know how to navigate federal data systems.

PlainCollege covers more than 6,000 U.S. institutions, offering side-by-side comparisons of tuition costs, admission rates, program-level earnings, and long-term financial outcomes. We present the data without editorial rankings or sponsored placements, the numbers speak for themselves.

Whether you are a high school student narrowing your college list, a parent evaluating the return on investment of a private university, a guidance counselor helping first-generation students navigate their options, or a researcher studying educational outcomes, PlainCollege gives you the data you need in a format you can actually use.

What You Can Find on PlainCollege

PlainCollege organizes federal education data into several browsable categories:

• School profiles - Enrollment, location, ownership type, Carnegie classification, and institutional website for every Title IV institution
• Admissions data - Acceptance rates, average SAT and ACT scores, and score ranges for selective institutions
• Costs and financial aid - In-state and out-of-state tuition, average net price by family income bracket, Pell Grant rates, and median student debt at graduation
• Student demographics - Ethnic composition, gender breakdown, first-generation student rates, and average age of the student body
• Outcomes - Completion rates (4-year and 6-year), retention rates, median earnings at 6 and 10 years after enrollment, and loan repayment rates
• Program-level earnings - Median earnings and debt for over 2,200 fields of study (CIP codes) at individual schools, enabling comparison of specific majors across institutions

You can browse schools by state, search by name or ZIP code, compare up to four schools side-by-side, or explore rankings by earnings, selectivity, value, and institutional size.

Our Data Sources

All data on PlainCollege comes from the U.S. Department of Education College Scorecard, a federal dataset maintained by the Department of Education in partnership with the U.S. Treasury Department and the Internal Revenue Service. The College Scorecard is the most comprehensive public source of institutional performance data for Title IV postsecondary institutions.

The Scorecard draws from three primary federal data systems:

• IPEDS (Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System) - Annual institutional reports covering enrollment, admissions, graduation rates, costs, and student demographics submitted by all Title IV schools to the National Center for Education Statistics
• NSLDS (National Student Loan Data System) - Federal loan records providing debt amounts, repayment rates, and default rates for students who received federal financial aid
• IRS Tax Records - De-identified earnings data matched to former students who received federal financial aid, measured at one, five, and ten years after enrollment

We access this data through the U.S. Department of Education's College Scorecard, which provides both institution-level and program-level earnings data.

The Scorecard covers public universities, private nonprofit colleges, and private for-profit institutions that participate in Title IV financial aid programs. This includes community colleges, four-year universities, graduate programs, and vocational schools.

How We Process the Data

Our ETL pipeline downloads the full College Scorecard dataset via the federal API and processes the data through several stages:

• Extraction - We retrieve data for over 6,000 institutions and approximately 71,000 program-level earnings records from the Scorecard API
• Normalization - Institution names, locations, and Carnegie classifications are standardized and URL-friendly slugs are generated for every school and program
• ROI Computation - We calculate return-on-investment metrics by comparing median earnings against total cost of attendance and median student debt
• Program-Level Processing - Over 2,200 unique fields of study are parsed, categorized by CIP code, and linked to their parent institutions
• Indexing - Composite database indexes and pre-computed statistics tables enable fast lookups by state, program, selectivity, and earnings bracket

Earnings figures are presented directly as reported by the College Scorecard without adjustment. They reflect actual reported earnings from IRS tax records, not projections or estimates. We do not apply inflation adjustments, weighting, or any statistical modeling to the underlying numbers.

Each school profile is assembled from dozens of individual data fields, organized into sections covering admissions, costs, demographics, and outcomes. Program-level pages show earnings by field of study with institution context.

Data Currency

The College Scorecard is updated several times per year by the U.S. Department of Education (institutional/IPEDS-derived metrics and field-of-study earnings metrics are sometimes refreshed on separate schedules), not on a single annual date. The current dataset on PlainCollege reflects a recent Scorecard release, though institutional data and program-level earnings data may occasionally come from different release dates when they were pulled at different times. Earnings data has an inherent lag, the most recent cohort earnings typically reflect students who enrolled six to ten years prior, as the IRS matching process requires time to accumulate post-enrollment earnings data.

We monitor the College Scorecard API for new releases and refresh our database periodically as they become available. Our update schedule follows the Department of Education's release calendar rather than a fixed internal date.

IPEDS institutional data (enrollment, admissions, costs) is generally one to two years old at the time of Scorecard publication, reflecting the standard reporting lag for institutional data collection. Tuition figures may not reflect the current academic year's prices.

Editorial Independence

Raw data from the U.S. Department of Education College Scorecard, IPEDS, the National Student Loan Data System, and the Treasury/IRS earnings linkage is transformed into readable profiles by our continuous data pipeline and validated against the source before publication. The PlainCollege editorial team is responsible for editorial standards, methodology, and corrections, see our editorial & corrections policy.

We do not accept payment, sponsorship, or promoted placement from any school, college, or education entity. Our only revenue source is contextual display advertising served by Google AdSense, advertisers do not influence which institutions we cover or how we present data, and they do not receive preferential placement.

Limitations and Disclaimers

PlainCollege is an independent project and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to the U.S. Department of Education, the federal government, or any college or university. We provide data for informational purposes only. Users should be aware of the following limitations:

• Earnings data covers only federal aid recipients - Median earnings figures represent former students who received federal financial aid. Students who paid entirely out of pocket are not included, which may skew earnings at wealthier institutions
• Program-level data has privacy thresholds - Earnings are suppressed when fewer than 30 students are in a cohort, so many school-program combinations have no reported earnings
• Admission data reflects first-time, full-time students - Transfer students and part-time students are generally excluded from acceptance rates, test scores, and completion rates
• Cost data is an average, not a guarantee - Net price figures reflect the average for students receiving aid in a given income bracket, not what any individual student will pay
• Completion rates use fixed time windows - Four-year and six-year rates do not capture students who transfer and graduate elsewhere
• ROI metrics are simplistic - Return-on-investment calculations do not account for geographic cost of living, career field differences, or the non-monetary benefits of education

While we strive to keep data accurate and up-to-date, we cannot guarantee completeness or accuracy. Always verify important information directly with the institution or official government sources before making educational or financial decisions.

Contact

Questions, feedback, or data corrections? Reach us at hello@plaincollege.com. We welcome inquiries from students, researchers, educators, and journalists.

PlainCollege is an independent data publisher. We transform complex government datasets into accessible, searchable resources for students, families, counselors, researchers, journalists, and the public, free and without paywalls.