College Guides
Data-driven guides to help you evaluate colleges using federal outcomes data. Learn how the U.S. Department of Education's College Scorecard tracks post-enrollment earnings, graduation rates, and student debt for over 6,000 institutions. These guides show you how to calculate real ROI and compare schools beyond magazine rankings.
The short answer
These 7 guides explain how to read College Scorecard earnings, net price, debt, and completion figures so you can compare schools with federal outcomes data instead of magazine rankings alone.
According to the U.S. Department of Education's College Scorecard.
- 7
- Guides on this hub
- Scorecard
- Primary outcomes source
- IPEDS
- Institutional characteristics
Understanding College Earnings Data
What College Scorecard earnings data measures, how it's collected, and why median earnings 10 years after enrollment matter more than starting salary.
Is College Worth It? A Data-Driven Answer
How to calculate the return on investment of a college degree using tuition costs, median earnings, and completion rates from federal data.
How to Compare Colleges with Data
Beyond rankings, how to use earnings outcomes, graduation rates, debt levels, and net price to evaluate colleges objectively.
Colleges with the Best ROI
Which colleges produce the highest earnings relative to cost, a ranking using College Scorecard data, plus how to calculate ROI for any school you consider.
Student Debt vs. Earnings by Major
Which majors produce the best and worst debt-to-earnings ratios? Federal data comparing median debt and 10-year earnings across 16 fields of study.
Community College vs. 4-Year University: Outcomes Compared
Earnings, debt, and career outcomes for both paths using federal College Scorecard data, including the transfer route, healthcare shortcuts, and a field-by-field breakdown.
Understanding Financial Aid and Net Price
What net price means, how financial aid reduces what you pay, and why sticker price is misleading. A guide to evaluating true college affordability.
Methodology
Every guide on PlainCollege is built from primary federal sources. The headline outcome figures (median earnings six and ten years after enrollment, completion rates, retention rates, and student-debt distributions) come from the U.S. Department of Education College Scorecard, which the Department maintains using de-identified Treasury tax records linked to federal student-aid applicants. Institutional characteristics, control type, location, Carnegie Classification, undergraduate enrollment, admissions selectivity, racial and ethnic composition, and historical accreditation status, come from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System maintained by the National Center for Education Statistics. Where we make field-level wage comparisons, we use the Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics tables, joined to academic CIP codes via the official crosswalk. Carnegie Basic Classification labels reflect the 2025 update from the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. We cite the specific source agency and release version inline wherever a numeric claim appears, and we link to the underlying public dataset where possible. Source documentation, data dictionaries, suppression rules, and replication code are linked from our full data methodology page.