Methodology

Earnings. 10-year median earnings from Census PSEO, by CIP × institution. We report the aggregate median — the half-and-half line — not the average, which inflates from outliers.

Debt. College Scorecard institution-level median debt at graduation, averaged across institutions teaching the major.

Labor-market signal. BLS Employment Projections 2024–34, joined to the major via CIP→SOC mapping. When a major maps cleanly to one occupation (e.g. nursing → registered nurses), the numbers are exact. When it maps to several adjacent roles (biology → medical scientists, biological technicians, environmental scientists, etc.), headline numbers are blended — a weighted average across mapped occupations. The page exposes this with a "blended" tag and a low tiering confidence flag, so you can see which majors have clean labor-market signals and which don't.

Tier transparency. We show the primary occupation alongside adjacent "advanced practice" and related roles, with their separate wages and growth rates, so the blended headline is auditable.

State landscape. IPEDS counts of four-year institutions and community colleges, aggregate transfer-in volume, and median outcomes (graduation rate, 10-year earnings, debt) for the state's four-year sector.

Top destinations. IPEDS transfer-admission counts paired with Scorecard 6-year graduation rate, 10-year earnings, and median debt for the receiving institution.

Feeder community colleges. IPEDS transferred-out counts where reported.

What we don't have. NSC StudentTracker is the gold standard for cross-institution transfer tracking. It's not in this release. The figures we cite are best-available federal proxies — they capture transfer volume better than transfer destination quality.

Cost. Published tuition and fees from College Scorecard, summed across the path (e.g. 2 years at a community college plus 2 years at a four-year for the 2+2 path).

Earnings. The same Census PSEO 10-year median used in Worth-It.

Time-to-degree. Nominal — 2+2 = 4 years. We don't adjust for actual time-to-completion; students often take longer, and that's a real cost. Read the page numbers as best-case.

Premium and net cost. Arithmetic from the two paths' numbers. No curve-fitting, no discount-rate model — visible math you can re-do on paper.

Three rankings, all outcome-first: Best Colleges for Economic Mobility (Opportunity Insights), Best Community Colleges for Transfer (IPEDS transfer-out scale plus outcomes), and Best Colleges for Transfer Students (IPEDS transfer-in volume plus Scorecard completion). There's no "best overall" list — that question is too compressed to answer honestly with a single number.

Full weights, eligibility rules, tie-breakers, and per-ranking limitations live on a dedicated page: Rankings methodology →

Each college profile is built from the same federal sources used elsewhere on the site: IPEDS for enrollment, control, locale, admissions, and completions; College Scorecard for earnings, debt, and completion outcomes; Opportunity Insights for mobility tier where present. Where available, profiles also carry VA GI Bill participation, HUD Fair Market Rents for local housing context, and Georgetown CEW's independent ROI ranking.

The visual hierarchy is deliberate: outcome metrics — earnings, debt-to-income, mobility — get the most prominent placement. Selectivity gets one row. Reputation and peer-survey data get zero — they're not on the page because they're not in the source files.