How we score programs

Azimuth's program ROI benchmarks every credential against the question “What if a student didn't enroll?” We anchor earnings to College Scorecard's highest-credential median earnings measure, then tier the opportunity cost by credential level:

• Associate and bachelor's programs are judged against the national high-school baseline (a ten-year cumulative wage opportunity of roughly $300k).
• Master's programs use the national bachelor's baseline (about $528k over ten years).
• Other credentials continue to rely on the institutional net-price proxy when complementary earnings data would otherwise be suppressed.

The ROI we publish is the ten-year incremental earnings surplus divided by the appropriate baseline cost. Negative scores indicate programs that currently trail their opportunity cost.

Azimuth calculates four main metrics for each program, presented as percentile indices (1–99) where higher is better:

• Return Score — measures the program's return on investment based on post-graduation earnings relative to the cost of attendance and opportunity cost.
• Grads/Year — reflects the three-year average number of students completing the program, serving as a proxy for program stability and established track record.
• Overall Score — combines the return and program size signals into a single composite score that rewards both strong outcomes and meaningful scale.

Earnings figures represent median annual earnings for graduates at specific time horizons after completion. When available, we display the most seasoned data point (typically 5 years post-graduation) as it provides the most stable picture of career outcomes.

Key context for interpreting earnings:

• Median means half of tracked graduates earn more, half earn less — it's not an average that can be skewed by outliers.
• Tracked graduates are those who received federal financial aid AND could be matched to tax records. This is typically 40–70% of a program's graduates.
• Time horizon matters — 1-year earnings are often lower because graduates may have worked only part of the measurement year.

We display two types of debt separately to help families understand who bears the burden:

• Student Debt — Median federal Stafford loan debt at graduation. This is what the student borrowed and will repay.
• Parent Debt — Median Parent PLUS loan debt. This is what parents borrowed on behalf of the student.

Note: Debt figures are measured at the time of graduation and don't reflect post-graduation borrowing (like graduate school loans) or payments made after graduation.

All program-level data comes from the U.S. Department of Education's College Scorecard, a publicly available dataset that provides information on institutional characteristics, enrollment, costs, and student outcomes including earnings after graduation.

The College Scorecard combines data from multiple federal sources:

• IPEDS (NCES) — Graduation counts, program enrollment
• NSLDS — Student loan borrowing records
• FSA — Parent PLUS loan borrowing
• IRS/Treasury — Earnings data via SSN matching

Azimuth performs its own analysis on this base data to calculate our proprietary metrics including return on investment, program size indices, and aggregate scores. We do not modify the underlying federal data — we build upon it to create insights not available in the raw Scorecard.

We refresh program rankings when the U.S. Department of Education releases new College Scorecard data, typically once or twice per year (usually October/November). Each update recalculates all scores to ensure internal consistency across programs and institutions.

Current data vintage: Academic Year 2021-22 completers, with earnings measured through Calendar Year 2023.