What we checked before publishing.

This report records the automated and independent source checks run against the database used by the public site.

Database-wide checks

We tested primary-key uniqueness, institution–program joins, field and credential joins, negative and impossible values, percentage ranges, benchmark medians, coverage counts, program-price relationships, wage percentiles and projection arithmetic.

ROI checks

The audit independently recalculated eligible associate and bachelor’s scenarios from the published formula. Non-finite values are rejected. Results beyond the site’s ±1,000% reliability guardrail are withheld rather than promoted in rankings.

Source comparisons

Nineteen college records and twenty program records were compared directly with the imported College Scorecard source files. Names, cost, completion, earnings, debt and payment fields matched in all 39 cases.

Warnings that remain

The audit found 189 nonfatal review flags: 143 duplicate readable school slugs, 28 source-name formatting anomalies, 17 normalized duplicate identities and one ROI beyond the publication guardrail. Routes use federal UNITIDs to disambiguate names, display normalization handles formatting, branch identities remain distinct, and the extreme ROI is withheld.

See the ROI methodology, source definitions and coverage by measure.