Editorial policy

Sourcing

Factual claims about cost, admissions, completion and earnings come from primary sources, not from other websites. In practice that means the U.S. Department of Education, the National Center for Education Statistics, Federal Student Aid, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, state education agencies, and colleges’ own published material.

Where a figure is quoted, the source and its reporting year are stated with it. See Data sources.

Commercial independence

Editorial decisions and commercial ones are kept apart, and the rule is absolute rather than a matter of degree:

• No college, service or advertiser can influence search order, recommendations, or what appears on a profile.
• Anything sponsored or affiliate-linked is labelled where it appears, not only in a policy page nobody reads.
• A commercial relationship is never a reason to publish something, to leave something out, or to soften it.

At present this site carries no advertising, no affiliate links and no sponsored content. This section describes the rules that apply if that changes.

Accuracy and uncertainty

Where data is incomplete we say so rather than filling the gap. Where a figure is an estimate, it is labelled an estimate. Where a number is easy to misread, the page explains what it measures, because a graduation rate or a median earnings figure means considerably less than it appears to at first glance.

We do not present modelled or inferred numbers as if they were reported ones.

Review and freshness

Education policy, aid rules and deadlines change. Articles carry a last reviewed date and a review interval, and anything overdue is flagged internally for a fresh check. Time-sensitive material, such as application deadlines and aid rules, is reviewed more often than explanatory content.

Publishing can be scheduled. Approval cannot: no process on this site can generate content and publish it without a person reviewing it first. Those are separate states by design.

Corrections

When we get something wrong we fix it and note that we did. Corrections to a substantive factual error are recorded on the page rather than quietly edited away.

Reproducing a figure exactly as a federal source published it is not an error on our part, but if the underlying source is wrong we would still rather know.

Use of AI

Automated tools may be used to draft and organise content. They are not used to invent facts, generate figures, or publish anything without review. No article on this site is published because software decided it was ready.