Reports
Executive Summary (TL;DR)
Start here: The College Payoff, 2026 synthesizes Education Pays and Georgetown CEW earnings by credential and major. Sticker price, net price, debt, and first-year earnings do not move in lockstep—and they rarely tell the whole story of whether a degree paid off.
Student loan debt statistics and debt-to-earnings by major show where balances weigh heaviest. Our Scorecard ROI methodology states cohort rules and clarifies exactly what we will not claim from federal files alone.
Featured Reads
See All Data Hub →National and cross-sector cuts—the same underlying tables we use in daily coverage, presented so a reader can move from a figure to the source line.
Student loan debt statistics
Typical balances and payments, sliced by institution type, from Education Department borrower data released through the College Scorecard.
Scholarship statistics (Pell & need-based)
Who receives need-based aid, at what levels, and how that picture shifts between two- and four-year sectors.
Online vs traditional cost
A tuition-to-tuition comparison using one national definition so online and campus programs can be read side by side.
Debt-to-earnings by major
Loan balances set against early-career earnings—where the burden is heaviest, and where the federal record thins out.
Ranking colleges by ROI
Return-on-investment framing across institutions: how the numerator and denominator are chosen, and what they omit.
Tuition trends by state
Published tuition by state—useful context when legislatures debate appropriations and when families compare public options across borders.
Rankings (Live)
Full Rankings Hub →State-only and nationwide Scorecard-based leaderboards. Each entry states which students are in frame and which federal release the figures draw from.
National ranking tables hub
Directory of College Scorecard + IPEDS tables—overall ROI, graduation rates, selectivity, middle-income net price, HBCU and research-university lists, and more.
California best value public four-years
A California-only spotlight on major public four-years—flagship, polytechnic, and broad-access campuses in one state system.
Texas public four-year outcomes benchmarks
Sector-level benchmarks for Texas public four-years, aligned with statewide cost and tuition series.
Texas vs Florida — tuition, aid, ROI
Head-to-head sticker price, aid, and ROI context for two large Sun Belt public systems.
Live Reports
Report Standards
- 01 Enterprise-style explainers grounded in federal records.
- 02 Charts built for citation and public sharing.
- 03 Explicit dating and sourcing on every figure.
The College Payoff, 2026
Education Pays 2026, Georgetown CEW, and program-level ROI.
College Scorecard ROI Methodology
Cohorts, cost/earnings fields, and suppression rules.
State financial aid: grants vs loans
Grant and loan mix against net price, with cross-state examples.
About our Data
For interactive cuts by topic, use the data hub; for state leaderboards, the rankings index; for institution profiles, schools search. The site-wide methodology explains how we process sources before they reach a headline.