Data Sources & Attribution

Comprehensive data on costs, graduation rates, student debt, and post-college earnings for every accredited institution in the United States.

Data provided by the U.S. Department of Education, College Scorecard.

The Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System — the primary federal source for data on colleges and universities in the United States. Programs and graduates by major come from the IPEDS Completions survey (2024 data).

Source: U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS).

The federal crosswalk between Classification of Instructional Programs (CIP) majors and Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) careers.

Source: U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, and U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, CIP–SOC Crosswalk.

The nation's primary source of occupational information — skills, abilities, knowledge, work activities, and interests for over 1,000 occupations.

This site includes information from the O*NET® 30.0 Database by the U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration (USDOL/ETA). Used under the CC BY 4.0 license. O*NET® is a trademark of USDOL/ETA. College Decoded has modified some of this information.

Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS), May 2025, for pay, and Employment Projections 2025–35 for job growth and openings. Where a May 2025 figure is missing, the May 2024 figure is shown and labeled.

Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (May 2025) and Employment Projections (2025–35).

Career exploration, training, and job resources sponsored by the U.S. Department of Labor, including its certification and scholarship finders.

Sponsored by the U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration.

Basic pay by grade and years of service, effective January 1, 2026, shown on military careers alongside the O*NET military crosswalk.

Source: U.S. Department of Defense, Defense Finance and Accounting Service, 2026 military basic pay table.

First-time pass rates for professional licensing exams, shown only as each exam board publishes them and cited on the career page.

Pass rates are attributed on each career page to the exam board and report they come from.

30-year (1991–2020) average temperatures and precipitation from the weather station nearest each campus.

Source: NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, U.S. Climate Normals 1991–2020.

Bulk records of individual political contributions for the 2021–2024 election cycles, counted for people who listed a college as their employer. Shown only as totals, and only for colleges with at least 50 donors.

Source: Federal Election Commission bulk individual contribution files, 2021–2024 cycles, aggregated by College Decoded.

IP-to-geolocation database used to detect anomalous sign-ins (e.g. impossible travel, unfamiliar country) for account-security alerting. Geolocation is computed server-side and never stored alongside identifiable user data beyond the security-event log.

IP geolocation by DB-IP (https://db-ip.com), licensed under CC BY 4.0.