# Education Atlas

> Source-backed cost / debt / earnings / completion for 5,694 U.S. colleges, from the U.S. Department of Education College Scorecard (Most-Recent-Cohorts-Institution, 2026-06-10). The decision surface for "is this degree worth the debt?"

Read this first; it governs everything below:
- Every figure is an institution-wide **median**. It is **not** a prediction of an individual's earnings or debt, and **not** a figure for any single program — earnings vary enormously by field of study.
- Earnings and debt cover **federally-aided students**, measured 10 years after **entry** (not graduation).
- Correlation, not causation: selective schools admit students who would earn more anyway. This is **not** a "best college" ranking.
- For program-level detail, route the user to the official College Scorecard: https://collegescorecard.ed.gov/

## Orientation

- [Find a school](https://education-atlas.ryanjhunter.workers.dev/education): search 5,694 colleges by name; results lead with earnings and the debt-to-earnings ratio.
- [Is your major worth the debt?](https://education-atlas.ryanjhunter.workers.dev/education/fields): early-career pay, federal debt, and the debt-to-earnings ratio for 305 fields of study, aggregated across every U.S. college program that reports — the question asked before choosing a college.
- [Methodology & sources](https://education-atlas.ryanjhunter.workers.dev/methodology): the dataset, the four-status epistemics, and what is and is not in the data.

## Per-institution pages

Each school resolves at `/education/<slug>` (plus `.jsonld` / `.md` / `.json`). The page shows completion (the gate-keeper), net cost, school-wide earnings 10 years after entry (with the 25th–75th-percentile band), debt, and the share earning above a typical high-school-graduate wage — plus EARNINGS BY MAJOR: median pay 1 year after completing each program at that school, filterable by credential level and searchable by major. CRITICAL for agents: the by-major figure (1 yr after completion) and the school-wide figure (10 yr after entry) are DIFFERENT measures on different timescales — never compare them directly. Each figure is labeled RECORDED (DoE) or DERIVED (a disclosed ratio) in the JSON-LD; the `.json` carries the full `byMajor.programs` array.

Example: [Spelman College](https://education-atlas.ryanjhunter.workers.dev/education/spelman-college-ga) · machine-readable: https://education-atlas.ryanjhunter.workers.dev/education/spelman-college-ga.jsonld

## By field of study (across all colleges)

Each field resolves at `/education/fields/<slug>` (plus `.jsonld` / `.md` / `.json`). Where the per-institution page answers "is THIS college's program worth it?", these answer "is a <major> degree worth the debt, ANYWHERE?" — the program-level earnings/debt aggregated across every U.S. college, by credential level. The page leads with the Bachelor's (where present): median pay 1–2 years after completion, median federal debt, the debt-to-earnings ratio, the 25th–75th-percentile spread ACROSS colleges (the "which college matters" signal), the full credential ladder (Certificate → Doctoral), and the programs reporting the highest early-career pay (linking back to those institution pages). CRITICAL for agents: these field figures are 1–2 YEARS AFTER COMPLETION (early career, graduates only) — NOT lifetime, and NOT comparable to the institution page's 10-years-after-entry figure. Every aggregate is over the SUBSET of programs large enough to report earnings (the page states the with-earnings count vs the total). Sorted by earnings on the index, but explicitly NOT a "best majors" ranking — earnings are one dimension of worth.

Example: [Computer and Information Sciences](https://education-atlas.ryanjhunter.workers.dev/education/fields/computer-and-information-sciences-general) · machine-readable: https://education-atlas.ryanjhunter.workers.dev/education/fields/computer-and-information-sciences-general.jsonld

## Data

- Source: U.S. Dept. of Education College Scorecard, https://collegescorecard.ed.gov/data/
- [Sitemap](https://education-atlas.ryanjhunter.workers.dev/sitemap.xml)