Microproduct data guideintermediate

College Scorecard Institution Data

U.S. college cost, completion, debt, and earnings statistics for building school-comparison and program-research tools.

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At a glance

Difficulty
Intermediate — some data preparation helps
Size
Small · ≤0.5 GB
Formats
JSON, CSV
Access
API or Download
API key
Required
Provider
U.S. Department of Education
Updates
Annual
Data terms
U.S. Government public data / federal copyright guidance

From source to product signal

Test a product idea in four steps

College Scorecard exposes institution and field-of-study metrics through an api.data.gov key. Start with one state and a few fields such as tuition, completion, and earnings. Many debt and earnings values cover Title IV cohorts only, and the latest object can mix metrics from different years.

1

Check the setup

  • Python 3.10 or newer
  • A notebook environment such as Jupyter or Google Colab
  • A free api.data.gov key saved in the DATA_GOV_API_KEY environment variable
2

Access the data

  1. 1.Register for a free api.data.gov key and save it in the DATA_GOV_API_KEY environment variable.
  2. 2.Open the College Scorecard API documentation and choose one state plus a short field list.
  3. 3.Request a bounded school page and record which latest metrics came from different years.
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3

Run the Python example

Install the packages, then run the notebook cell.

python -m pip install pandas requests

import os
import pandas as pd
import requests

response = requests.get(
    "https://api.data.gov/ed/collegescorecard/v1/schools",
    params={
        "api_key": os.environ["DATA_GOV_API_KEY"],
        "school.state": "CA",
        "per_page": 20,
        "fields": ",".join([
            "id",
            "school.name",
            "latest.cost.tuition.in_state",
            "latest.completion.rate_suppressed.overall",
            "latest.earnings.10_yrs_after_entry.median",
        ]),
    },
    timeout=30,
)
response.raise_for_status()
schools = pd.DataFrame(response.json()["results"])
print(schools.head(20))
4

Test a useful signal

Compare in-state tuition and earnings for California colleges

Rank a bounded set of California institutions by in-state tuition and ten-year median earnings.

  1. 01Confirm the API returned the requested fields for a single state page.
  2. 02Rank schools on tuition and earnings and flag missing or suppressed values.
  3. 03Explain that many earnings and debt fields describe Title IV cohorts and that latest metrics may not share one reporting year.

Dataset details

U.S. Department of Education is a government source. Last verified 2026-08-14. Temporal coverage: institution metrics with year-specific and latest objects.

Theme

Demographics & Development

Domains

EducationHigher Education

Data types

TabularSurvey Estimates

Tasks

Provider ComparisonMarket ResearchCommunity Comparison

Geography

United States

Formats

JSONCSV

Provider

U.S. Department of Education

Data terms

U.S. Government public data / federal copyright guidance