Methodology

Scope & Institutions

The tracker covers 1,890 four-year public; private, nonprofit; and private, for-profit institutions across all 50 states and Washington, D.C., where more than half of the degrees awarded are bachelor’s level or higher. We exclude online-only colleges. We include only institutions flagged as operating in the most recent year available in the National Center for Education Statistics’ Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS). (Some colleges in our data set may now be closed.)

We refresh the IPEDS Complete Data Files three times a year when the federal government publishes new information files in the fall, winter and spring. Definitions of IPEDS variables can be found here.

Geography and outcomes

College geographic information – including how urban the local area is – is based on IPEDS classifications of city, suburb, town and rural. Within those categories, IPEDS further specifies if a city or suburb is large, midsize or small. Similarly, a town or rural community may be classified as fringe, distant or remote depending on how far it is from a community of at least 50,000 people. Definitions are available here.

Graduation rate data also comes from IPEDS. The tracker shows the percentage of students who graduate within six years — a measure long used as the benchmark for graduation rates by colleges, researchers and lawmakers despite some pushback from critics who question whether the standard should be four years.

Debt and earnings data come from the Department of Education’s College Scorecard. We show median earnings for students who received federal aid and are employed 10 years after entering college. We also display the median total federal loan debt for students who graduated.

Grad PLUS loan data is found in the U.S. Department of Education’s Federal Student Aid Direct Loan dashboard.

Financial Indicators

IPEDS finance surveys provide the bulk of our financial indicator data: revenue, expenses, net tuition per full-time equivalent student, endowment levels, spending, research expenses and revenue from state and federal grants and contracts. We collected and analyzed a decade of data. Using the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Consumer Price Index, we adjusted dollar figures to 2024 dollars to reflect the most recent year of IPEDS data available. For federal grants and contracts, we excluded Pell grants, which institutions distribute to low-income students. This helps us better show how much federal funding an institution receives for reasons other than student financial aid.

The Financial Responsibility Composite Score comes from filings published annually by the Department of Education’s Office of Federal Student Aid. They were last updated with data from the 2022-23 school year. The government calculates these scores on a scale from negative 1.0 to 3.0 by looking at three ratios designed to gauge institutional financial health: primary reserve, equity and net income ratio. An institution passes with a score of 1.5 or above. The measure is imperfect; leading researchers have pointed out some colleges that closed due to financial challenges had still achieved a passing score. Still, the indicator can signal financial trouble and bring increased scrutiny. Colleges that score between 1.0 and 1.4 are placed into an oversight zone and become subject to more financial monitoring. Colleges with scores below 1.0 must submit a letter of credit to remain eligible for federal financial aid.

All private colleges receive composite scores. Public colleges can instead prove they are financially responsible by following other requirements, including providing a letter that they are backed by the “full faith and credit” of a government entity.

The tracker also displays, if applicable, when an institution is under the highest level of federal financial monitoring, known as Heightened Cash Monitoring 2. The Education Department can delay disbursement of aid to these colleges. The tracker shows if an institution has been at this status at any point since December 2024 and for what reason, such as financial responsibility concerns or an adverse accreditor action.

On a college’s individual institutional profile, the tracker may show blue, red or yellow fields depending on whether a specific financial or enrollment trend is improving or worsening. Declines of 10% or more over five years appear red, increases of 10% or more appear blue and all other changes appear yellow.

There are also two fields that show a yes or no result: whether the college ended the latest year at a loss, and whether the institution saw a decline in enrollment in 3 of the past 5 years. Those fields will turn red for a “yes” response or blue for a “no” response.

Other fields will change red, blue or yellow depending on if the value in the field is higher or lower. Colleges that ended the year at a loss no more than once in the past decade show blue. The tracker shows yellow for two to four losses and red for five or more. For the federal financial responsibility score, colleges with a score of 1.5 or above show blue. Scores below 1.5 show red.

Enrollment & Staffing

Enrollment and staffing data come from IPEDS. For enrollment data, we use the 12-month unduplicated headcount, which includes both full-time and part-time students. In this data, international students are classified as U.S. nonresident alien students. IPEDS defines a U.S. nonresident alien student as “a person who is not a citizen or national of the United States and who is in this country on a visa or temporary basis and does not have the right to remain indefinitely.”

Staffing data includes part-time and full-time employees. Instructional staff is defined as employees who also conduct research in addition to teaching. Total staff combines instructional and non-instructional employees.

We use the IPEDS student-to-faculty ratio, which is calculated by dividing the number of fall full-time equivalent undergraduate students by the number of fall full-time equivalent instructional staff at the undergraduate level. IPEDS calculates full-time equivalent students by taking the number of full-time students and adding one-third of the number of part-time students. The same formula is used for staff.

College Cuts

Layoffs, program suspensions, teach-outs and closures are pulled weekly from the CollegeCuts Tracker, supplemented by reporting from The Hechinger Report. CollegeCuts is a civic data project led by data analyst Oluwadunsin Agbolabori. We verify each entry from CollegeCuts weekly before adding it to our tracker and also add cuts we find separately.

Accreditation Actions

Accreditation actions are compiled from the six regional accreditors recognized by the U.S. Department of Education: Higher Learning Commission, Middle States Commission on Higher Education, New England Commission of Higher Education, Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities, Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges, Western Association of Schools and Colleges Senior College and University Commission.

We include warnings, probations, notices of concern, show-cause actions, heightened monitoring, mergers and closures, as well as when such actions are lifted or removed. Specialized accreditors, such as those overseeing art schools, are not currently covered.

The tracker pulls data weekly from the U.S. Department of Education Database of Accredited Postsecondary Institutions and Programs (DAPIP). The tracker also pulls data weekly from the six regional accreditors’ individual websites because DAPIP data can lag. The Hechinger Report verifies each entry before it appears on the website.

Research Funding Cuts

This tracker displays federal research funding cuts since the start of the second Trump administration in 2025. It uses data from the Grant Witness database, covering grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), National Science Foundation, Environmental Protection Agency, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. We display grants that Grant Witness marks as terminated, as well as NIH grants that are marked frozen. Legal challenges remain active in some cases. Grants that have been reinstated or unfrozen are excluded. We exclude grants where the university passes funds on to community groups by looking at project titles and abstracts and filtering for phrases including “manage and distribute funds” and “regional grantmaker.” We only display grants with a remaining award amount of at least $100.

Limitations

Data released by the Department of Education lags by one to two academic years. Because we update the college cuts, accreditation actions and federal research funding cuts on a weekly, rather than daily, basis, this tracker may not show the most recent data from these sources.

The tracker does not provide an overall rating for an institution and it does not directly state whether an institution is likely to close or roll back offerings. Instead, we show whether an institution demonstrates concerning trends: a college with eight years of losses in the last decade and declining enrollment and net tuition revenue may be facing significant financial challenges. Conversely, a college with one or two red indicators may be responsibly offering more financial aid to students while buttressed by a strong endowment and increased revenue.

Private, nonprofit colleges, as well as foundations linked to public institutions, also report financial information to the IRS by filling out paperwork known as 990s and reporting data in categories defined by the IRS. IPEDS and IRS financial categories can differ even when they may share the same name. For example, IPEDS reports a single combined endowment assets figure. The 990, in contrast, has breakdowns for board-designated and donor-restricted endowments. Our figures may also contrast with those provided in an individual university’s financial statements or audits. For instance, a school may use a calendar year time frame in their audits instead of the school year time frame used by IPEDS.

We use IPEDS data because it’s more widely available and comparable for the 1,890 colleges and universities in our tracker. However, it could understate the value of public university endowments. In some cases, these funds may be partially held by associated foundations, and that money is not always included in IPEDS.

Downloads & Reuse

Every institution page and landing table has a download button that produces a plain text file separated by commas containing data across all years. This tracker is free and available to the public. Please credit The Hechinger Report and link back to this tracker.

Below, you can also download the full dataset of financial indicators used by this tracker. It includes IPEDS data as well as federal data showing financial responsibility scores for universities and showing which institutions are on Heightened Cash Monitoring 2.

For further questions about reuse and attribution, email the data team.

Spot a problem?

If you’ve found an issue with our data, contact us at editor@hechingerreport.org. We’ll look into it and get back to you.