College ROI Dataset: Net Price, Earnings and Payback for 6,273 U.S. Institutions

A single CSV covering every U.S. college in the federal College Scorecard that reports both a net price and graduate earnings, with a derived payback column built on BLS wage baselines. Updated 24 October 2026.

Why this file exists

Almost every "is college worth it" answer online stops at sticker price. The federal data needed to answer it properly is public, but it is split across Scorecard endpoints, published in inconsistent units, and missing the two figures that actually decide the question: the wages a student gives up while enrolled, and the years it takes to recover the full cost.

This dataset joins those pieces at institution level. Net price, completion rate and ten-year earnings come straight from the College Scorecard. The opportunity cost of enrolling uses the BLS high school median annual wage of $46,748, discounted to 65% on the assumption that students would otherwise earn below the median while young. The payback column divides the resulting full cost by the annual earnings premium over that same high school baseline.

It is deliberately conservative. Earnings are measured for everyone who entered, including students who never finished, so a school cannot raise its payback score by admitting only students who were going to succeed anyway. That makes the numbers lower than the marketing pages you will find elsewhere, and closer to what a median applicant actually experiences.

Download and licence

The CSV carries the eleven columns listed below. It is served directly from this domain with no form, no email capture and no rate limit.

Download college-roi-dataset.csv (0.55 MB)

Licence: the underlying figures are U.S. government works in the public domain. The derived columns and the assembled file may be reused commercially provided WorthDegree is credited and the source agencies are named. Attribution line: Source: WorthDegree College ROI Dataset, derived from U.S. Department of Education College Scorecard and BLS wage data.

Field dictionary

How payback years are computed

Worked example. A college with a $17,428 net price and $51,711 ten-year earnings produces a full cost of 4 × 17,428 + 4 × 46,748 × 0.65 = $191,257, a premium of $4,963, and a payback of 38.5 years. The same college at a $8,343 net price and $43,698 earnings yields $154,917 of cost against a negative premium, so no payback exists. The second case is the more common outcome in this file and the reason state-level medians matter more than national ones.

Coverage and known limits

The file covers 59 state and territory codes, with California (664 institutions), New York (417), Texas (411), Florida (377) and Pennsylvania (317) accounting for a quarter of all rows. By control, 2,325 are for-profit, 2,047 public and 1,901 private nonprofit. Earnings are reported for 5,127 institutions, estimated for 1,142 and missing for 4 — the earnings_confidence column lets you filter that out rather than inherit it silently.

Three limits are worth stating plainly. First, ten-year earnings are institution-wide medians across all majors; they do not tell you what a nursing graduate earns versus a philosophy graduate at the same school. Second, the opportunity cost uses a single national high school wage, so it understates the true cost in high-wage metros and overstates it in low-wage ones. Third, net price is an average across aided students, not a quote for any individual — a specific family's number depends on income and on what the financial aid office decides.

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Where to go next

State-level breakdowns for the twelve largest markets, each with every public college ranked by payback years: California, Texas, New York, Florida, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Ohio, Georgia, North Carolina, Michigan, New Jersey and Virginia. For the national picture, see the 2026 best-value list, the payback statistics page, or the full methodology.