Clear numbers. Clear sources.

What’s behind
the numbers?

Actual College Cost makes official college data easier to explore. Our source is the U.S. Department of Education College Scorecard, with institution metrics refreshed from the October 15, 2026 most-recent institution file and its official cohort dictionary. Historical tuition/net-price tables and program earnings retain the June 10, 2026 snapshot; independently sourced 2026–27 college budgets remain separate.

The price is not one number.

Tuition and required fees are the published price of instruction. Cost of attendance adds books, supplies and living expenses. Average net price subtracts grants and scholarships for the student population covered by the measure. Loans are not subtracted.

Net price covers first-time, full-time undergraduates receiving Title IV aid. At public colleges, it covers in-state students. It is not a personalized aid offer, and it does not describe every student. Program-based schools can report costs for a program rather than a conventional academic year.

Years and student groups matter.

Different figures refer to different years and cohorts. We distinguish each figure’s measurement period from its source-file year and retain the exact official cohort note. Current tuition covers academic year 2025–26; attendance cost, net price and income brackets cover 2024–25, although all come from source file 2025–26. Enrollment is Fall 2024. Debt pools FY2024 and FY2025 completers; earnings use their stated entry/completion cohorts, measurement years and inflation-dollar basis. The latest release date does not mean every number measures that year. Page titles use the latest applicable cost measurement year when known. Each card has its own period; a page-title year does not apply to every number. Income charts use five brackets from one release and source year; original older observations are listed separately.

Completion measures first-time, full-time students finishing within 150% of normal program time. Federal debt is the median among completers who borrowed. Earnings describe federally aided former students working and not enrolled, at a stated time after entry or completion. Entry-based earnings can include students who did not graduate.

A few honest gaps.

Suppressed, missing and invalid values are never replaced with zero. Negative cost values and out-of-range rates are withheld from display; source records remain unchanged. The initial snapshot excluded institutions with no usable cost values. This refresh retains every existing page even when the latest values are missing or the institution is nonoperating; it creates no new pages and never fills current gaps from older observations.

The website contains 5,756 college pages. The latest source contains 6,278 records: 6,195 marked currently operating and 83 nonoperating. Existing pages are refreshed where identity and population remain consistent; absent or changed-type records retain their labeled prior snapshot. Records without an existing page are documented for separate review. Coverage differs by metric. This is a historical government-data snapshot, not a real-time college price feed.

Refreshed institution fields use the current official Most Recent Institution Cohort Map. Retained historical records are not re-dated or extended from a newest-only file. Their tables show original source years, which need not be measurement years. The program snapshot lacks exact cohort-year metadata in the normalized package; program numbers are labeled by period after completion and release, and are excluded from cross-college comparison.

Comparing responsibly.

Comparison tables mark incompatible reporting periods and student populations. No proprietary affordability, quality or ROI scores are calculated. Historical tuition is shown in nominal dollars; yearly net-price observations remain separate to avoid implying an unchanged student population.

Independent, and here to help.

We are not affiliated with the U.S. Department of Education or any college. Check the institution’s own financial aid offer and net price calculator before making a decision. The campus illustration on our homepage is decorative artwork.