WorthDegree Investigations
Every investigation starts with a number people repeat without checking.
Three published so far. Same dataset each time — the federal College Scorecard, 6,273 institutions — and the same rule: if a sentence in the piece contains a figure, a script computed that figure, and you can run it yourself.
Most college advice is a ranking with the methodology hidden. These are the opposite. Each investigation picks one claim that gets repeated in guidance-counselor offices and comment sections alike, then sorts the whole national dataset to see whether the claim survives contact with the distribution.
Two of the three claims did not survive. The third survived only in a form nobody quotes.
The investigations
Investigation 01 · October 24, 2026 · List
72 colleges charge $45,000 a year. In 37 of them, the median graduate earns less than a high school graduate.
I filtered all 6,273 institutions down to the ones charging $45,000 or more per year after aid. Then I checked what their graduates actually earn ten years out, against the $46,748 median for workers with only a high school diploma.
| Colleges charging $45,000+ after aid | 72 |
| Of those, graduates earn no more than a high school grad | 37 |
| High school graduate median earnings, 10 yrs | $46,748 |
Investigation 02 · October 24, 2026 · Statistical
The most expensive college in California charges $99,682 a year. The cheapest hands students back $2,296. Ten years later, their graduates are 28% apart.
If price buys earnings, the correlation should be visible inside a single state labor market. In 500 California colleges it is not visible at all. Nationally it exists, and it is small enough to be useless for any individual decision.
| Price-earnings rank correlation, California (500 colleges) | r = 0.004 |
| Price-earnings rank correlation, national (5,031 colleges) | r = 0.193 |
| Share of earnings variation price explains | 3.7% |
Investigation 03 · October 25, 2026 · Anomaly
Colleges where 55% of students graduate report higher median earnings than colleges where 80% do.
The graduation rate is the most quoted number in higher education. Sorted into eight bands across 4,895 institutions, earnings climb to the 50–60% band and then fall — a curve that turns down precisely where the rankings assume it keeps rising.
| Median earnings, 50–60% completion band (the peak) | $42,198 |
| Median earnings, 80%+ completion band | $37,777 |
| Colleges with $70,000+ earnings where under half finish | 13 |
How every investigation is built
Nothing here comes from a press release or a third-party ranking. The pipeline is fixed and public:
- Source. The U.S. Department of Education College Scorecard bulk download — institution-level net price, median earnings ten years after enrollment, completion rate, and sector.
- Cleaning. Missing values are dropped, never imputed. Every investigation states its exact working sample, because the sample size is part of the finding.
- Computation. Every derived figure — a median, a correlation, a payback period, a percentage difference — is produced by a script, not by hand and not from memory.
- Reproduction. Each investigation closes with a step-by-step section that reproduces its headline number from the raw download in about four minutes.
- Counter-arguments. Each one carries three honest objections to its own thesis, including the strongest one, before the conclusion.
Where a figure is a federal estimate rather than a measured value, the piece says so next to the number, not in a footnote. Where several campuses of one system share an identical reported value, the piece flags the duplication instead of presenting it as independent evidence.
The full methodology is here, including how payback periods are computed and what the earnings figure does and does not include.
Use the numbers in your own piece
Journalists, counselors, and anyone writing about college costs are welcome to cite these findings. The underlying data is downloadable as a single CSV, with no form and no email gate.
Suggested citation
WorthDegree. Investigations: College ROI Data Studies. 2026. https://worthdegree.com/investigations.html
Download the College ROI Dataset (CSV) · 6,273 institutions, net price, 10-year earnings, payback period, and a confidence flag for every row.
What is being computed next
The next investigation looks at a single state where two colleges an hour apart report a $110,499 gap in what their graduates earn. After that: the colleges that earn least relative to what they charge, once completion and sector are held constant.
If you have a number you want tested against the full dataset, the dataset is open and the method is written down. Run it, and tell me if I got something wrong.
Keep going
Best-ROI colleges, 2026 · All 29 degrees ranked · Payback statistics · Dataset (CSV) · Methodology