truewise Honest US education data

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The honest number behind US education.

Look up any US college and see, program by program, whether its graduates out-earn a high-school graduate, and what families actually pay.

Try Baylor, UCLA, or your local community college.

What graduates earn vs a high-school grad

How far college programs out-earn a high-school graduateOf 60,202 judged programs, 5,396 (about 9%) leave graduates earning less than a typical high-school graduate; the rest earn more, a median of 63% more. Bars, left to right: earn less 5,396; 0-25% more 7,483; 25-50% more 11,190; 50-75% more 10,551; 75-100% more 7,491; 100-150% more 9,404; 150%+ more 8,687.9%12%19%18%12%16%14%HS lineearn lessearn more than a high-school graduate →n = 60,202 judged programs
How far college programs out-earn a high-school graduateOf 60,202 judged programs, 5,396 (about 9%) leave graduates earning less than a typical high-school graduate; the rest earn more, a median of 63% more. Bars, left to right: earn less 5,396; 0-25% more 7,483; 25-50% more 11,190; 50-75% more 10,551; 75-100% more 7,491; 100-150% more 9,404; 150%+ more 8,687.9%12%19%18%12%16%14%HS lineearn lessearn more →n = 60,202 judged programs

1 in 11 college programs with reported earnings leave graduates earning less than a typical high-school graduate.

Measured up to four years after finishing, from the Department of Education's own 2026 data. Only about a quarter of programs can be judged this way; most of the rest are privacy-suppressed by ED. Where the four-year figure is suppressed we fall back to the one-year figure; on strictly four-year data the rate is 1 in 14. Among cosmetology programs, 96% fall short. How we count.

Look one up →

What Truewise shows

All live today · built on federal data

Value Check Start here

Do a program's graduates out-earn a high-school graduate, and how does their debt compare to their earnings? Mirrors the federal Financial Value Transparency framework.

Open Value Check →

Careers

What a major actually pays: median graduate earnings by field and degree, the range across schools, and the occupations it leads to with BLS pay and growth outlook.

Explore majors →

High schools

Which US public high schools offer AP, calculus, and physics (about 1 in 4 offered none in 2021-22), plus counselors, staffing, and how states compare. Federal data, 2021-22.

Open the high-school hub →

On every
school profile

Affordability

What families at your income actually paid, not sticker price

ROI

Years for the earnings premium to recoup typical debt

Mobility

Who a school serves, and whether they get ahead

Open data, not another comparison site

Truewise is open data infrastructure researchers and journalists can build on, the website is the demo layer. Everything comes from public federal sources (College Scorecard, IPEDS, Federal Student Aid), cleaned into one documented dataset with a reproducible pipeline, published under an open license.

pip install truewise-data · open CC-BY dataset
Browse colleges by stateEvery school, pre-rendered Compare side by sideUp to four schools at your income Browse majors by payMedian earnings by field Rankings and listsHighest-paying, fastest payback Download the datasetParquet, CC BY 4.0 Embed a value checkDrop a school's card on your site Source & data on GitHubReproducible pipeline

How we stay honest

  • Every number carries its source and data vintage
  • We never impute, thin data says “insufficient data”
  • Figures are framed as “students like you earned roughly”, never a promise