Methodology

How every number on Truewise is computed. Last updated 2026-07-17. Data vintages: College Scorecard release 2026-06-10; BLS OEWS May 2023 + Employment Projections 2023-33; CRDC 2020-21.

Sources

Everything comes from public U.S. federal data. College outcomes use two College Scorecard bulk files (most recent release, 2026-06-10), joined on the IPEDS UNITID: the Field-of-Study file (per program: median earnings after completion, median debt) and the Institution file (the state and national high-school-graduate earnings thresholds). Careers demand adds the NCES CIP-to-SOC crosswalk, BLS OEWS wages, and BLS Employment Projections. High-school data comes from the Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC).

The earnings-premium test (Value Check)

For each program (school × 4-digit CIP × credential) we take median earnings four years after completion, the same figure the Department of Education displays on the public College Scorecard site, falling back to the one-year figure only where the four-year value is suppressed, and compare it to the state high-school-graduate earnings threshold:

• Passes: median earnings are at or above the state threshold.
• Falls short: median earnings are below it.
• Insufficient data: earnings are suppressed (small cohort) or no threshold is available. These are shown as "not enough data", never guessed.

The headline number, in full

Our headline is that 1 in 11 college programs with reported earnings leave graduates earning less than a typical high-school graduate. Here is exactly what is behind it, including the parts most coverage leaves out:

• Denominator. Of 227,980 programs, only 60,202 (about 26%) have earnings data; the rest are privacy-suppressed by ED for small cohorts. The 1-in-11 rate is computed on the reported-earnings set: 5,396 of 60,202 fall short (8.96%, or 1 in 11.2).
• Horizon. Earnings are measured up to four years after completing. Where the four-year figure is suppressed we fall back to the one-year figure, and about 27% of the failing programs use that fallback. On strictly four-year rows the rate is 7.0% (3,914 of 55,539), roughly 1 in 14. We report the broader 1-in-11 figure and tag one-year rows with a visible "1-yr" marker so you can weigh them.
• Cosmetology. Among cosmetology programs (CIP 12.04) specifically, 96% fall short (1,078 of 1,120 with data).

Reproduce these numbers: the dataset lives in published/value_check.parquet and the exact script is analysis/summary.py in the GitHub repo.

Principles

• Never impute. Suppressed values (PS, NA) become null and render as "insufficient data", never guessed. This rule is enforced by a data-quality gate (analysis/validate.py) with unit tests.
• Every figure carries its source and cohort year. Earnings reflect the recent past; we frame them as "graduates typically earned", never as a promise.
• A flag describes the data. It never tells anyone whether to attend a program.

Why do other studies say 1 in 4?

Some coverage (for example a widely cited HEA Group study) reports that attendees of about 1 in 4 higher-ed programs earn less than high-school graduates. The difference from our 1 in 11 is not a contradiction, it is three definitional choices:

• Who counts. Studies that count attendees (including non-completers) show higher failure rates than ones that count graduates, as we do here.
• The benchmark. A national high-school-earnings line, a state line, or an age-adjusted line each move the bar. We use ED's own state threshold.
• The denominator. Including or excluding privacy-suppressed programs changes the base. We are explicit that ours is the 26% of programs with reported earnings.

All three are defensible; we state ours plainly so the number is reproducible.

The other modules, in brief

Affordability shows net price by family-income bracket (College Scorecard NPT41 to NPT45), coalesced across a school's sector; suppressed brackets show as "not reported". ROI divides a program's median federal debt by its yearly earnings premium over a high-school graduate (years to recoup what was borrowed); it is null when there is no premium or no debt. Mobility puts Pell share, completion, and the earnings-premium pass rate side by side against the national median, with a transparent "hidden gem" rule (beats all three medians); it is an access-and-outcomes view, not the Chetty income-mobility rate. Careers pools program earnings to the field level and joins BLS occupation pay and outlook through the NCES CIP-to-SOC crosswalk. High schools report, from the CRDC, which advanced courses a school offers, participation, and staffing (counselors, security).

Full detail for every module is in METHODOLOGY.md and the data dictionary.

Known limitations

• Earnings cohorts predate the current year; figures describe past graduates.
• The debt-to-earnings ratio shown is a plain ratio, not the amortized federal D/E rate.
• High-school data is the 2020-21 CRDC, a pandemic year; course offerings are fairly stable year to year but participation counts should be read with that in mind. The collection year is labeled on every high-school page.
• The Careers occupation layer uses a many-to-many CIP-to-occupation crosswalk, so it lists the occupations a field commonly leads to rather than predicting any one graduate's job.