solventfutures
SOURCES & METHODOLOGY
Where the numbers come from
Every figure traces to a public source. Critique is welcome — that's the point.
What graduates typically earn
Federal College Scorecard program-level earnings — built from IRS records of real graduates, by school AND major, at 1, 5, and 10 years out.
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What it costs
Published tuition, fees, and cost of attendance — minus YOUR scholarships and grants, because the only price that matters is the one you'd pay.
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The actual loan rules
Current federal rates, borrowing caps, income-based repayment (RAP), the 30-year write-off, and its tax treatment — straight from statute, updated as the law changes.
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Cross-checked against independent data
Our lifetime earnings curves are validated against Georgetown CEW's independent estimates — median deviation under 4% at the 10-year mark.
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WHAT THE DATA CAN'T SEE — AND WE SAY SO
Small programs are hidden. Federal data suppresses tiny cohorts to protect privacy.
Formats are pooled. Evening, executive, online, and full-time versions of a degree blend into one row.
Elite no-loan schools are nearly invisible. The data sees the borrowing public best.
Long horizons are modeled. Nobody can observe a 40-year career in advance — past year 10, we model and label it.
Medians describe groups, not you. The people who chose a program may differ from the person deciding now — treat degree-value estimates as leaning optimistic; we disclose that rather than model it. And medians inherit the market’s inequities — pay gaps in the records become pay gaps in our projections; we report the market, we don’t endorse it.
The rules keep changing. Repayment and forgiveness terms have been rewritten roughly every three years — every projection that depends on a federal program is a disclosed risk, never a promise.
Advice changes markets. If many students chase today’s best-paying fields, tomorrow’s pay in those fields likely falls — it happened to 1970s engineers. Our numbers describe the past; crowds change the future.
The data sees borrowers best. Programs whose students rarely take federal aid barely appear in federal earnings records — the most elite schools are often the least visible. Where school-level data is missing, we say so and use national figures for the major.
1 YEAR 5 YEARS 10 YEARS 20 YEARS LIFETIME OBSERVED — real graduates' records MODELED — labeled as estimates
Found a problem in our numbers? Tell us — the Feedback button is on every page.
Represent a school? Submit a correction — we verify every claim against the federal source before anything changes, and every change is logged publicly.
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