US University & College Finance and Enrollment Intelligence

Find and segment US higher-education institutions using official IPEDS data via the Urban Institute Education Data Portal. Join institution details, 12-month enrollment, and institutional finance on UNITID + Portal data year. Export flat JSON or CSV to Clay, n8n, spreadsheets, or a CRM.

This Actor reports historical institutional finances. Institutional support is general administrative spending. It is not a verified IT budget, procurement budget, purchase intention, or available vendor budget.

Quick start

{"years":[2023],"states":["MA"],"maxResults":10}

An empty input returns up to ten institutions nationwide for Portal year 2023. Empty state/sector/UNITID arrays mean unrestricted. A small default run is designed to finish in less than five minutes. Results follow source directory order; they are not ranked by revenue. No API key or proxy is required for the source.

For known institutions across several sectors:

{"years":[2023],"unitids":[166027,110635,104090,109208],"maxResults":10}

Filters and limits

Input	Meaning
years	Array of verified Portal academic-year start indices, 2018–2023; default [2023]
states	Uppercase USPS states/territories, e.g. ["CA","MA"]
sectors	Array of IPEDS sector codes, listed below
unitids	Optional array of six-digit institution identifiers; repeats are removed
minEnrollment, maxEnrollment	Inclusive bounds on 12-month headcount
minRevenueUsd, maxRevenueUsd	Inclusive bounds on nominal USD total revenue
maxResults	Total unique institution-year limit across all selected years; default 10, maximum 10,000
maxCandidates	Directory candidate scan cap; default 2,000, maximum 20,000; must be at least maxResults
requestTimeoutSecs	Per-request timeout; default 25 seconds, range 2–60
maxRetries	Retries after the initial request; default 3, range 0–5
maxRuntimeSecs	Source retrieval time budget; default 240 seconds, maximum 3,600

Sector codes: 1 public four-year or above; 2 private nonprofit four-year or above; 3 private for-profit four-year or above; 4 public two-year; 5 private nonprofit two-year; 6 private for-profit two-year; 7 public less-than-two-year; 8 private nonprofit less-than-two-year; 9 private for-profit less-than-two-year. These are IPEDS classifications for the requested directory year, not guesses from institution names. Community colleges offering bachelor's degrees may be in sector 1.

Enrollment/revenue filters are applied after joining. Restrictive filters can yield fewer results than requested. Increase maxCandidates to examine more institutions, and raise the Apify run timeout if raising maxRuntimeSecs. RUN-SUMMARY identifies scan/result limits and skipped incomplete records. A source retrieval deadline or persistent source failure fails the run rather than claiming complete coverage. Output is collected before writing, so a retrieval failure produces no newly billed results.

Output definitions and years

Field	Source and definition	Unit / period
unitid	IPEDS institutional identifier, exact join key	Integer
inst_name	Directory inst_name	Name in directory data year
state_abbr	Directory USPS state/territory abbreviation	String
general_url	Directory url_school; HTTPS prefix supplied when absent	Source-listed URL; availability is not checked
total_enrollment	Headcount headcount; level_of_study, race, sex, ftpt, class_level and degree_seeking all 99 (total)	Students, unduplicated within institution over July 1–June 30; not fall enrollment or FTE
total_revenues_usd	Finance rev_total_current; total revenue including investment return and other additions	Nominal USD, source fiscal period
instruction_expenditures_usd	Finance exp_instruc_total; total instruction functional expenditures	Nominal USD, same fiscal period
institutional_support_spend	Finance exp_inst_supp_total; day-to-day institutional administrative support, including executive, legal, fiscal and other general operations	Nominal USD, same fiscal period; not an IT/procurement budget
sector_type, sector	Directory sector, readable label and original numeric code	Directory data year

Each row additionally includes data_year, directory_data_year, enrollment_data_year, finance_data_year, academic_year, finance_fiscal_year, enrollment_period, currency, monetary_unit, reporting_form, form_type, parent-reporting identifiers, and individual source URLs.

Year alignment matters. The Portal codebook defines year as the academic-year start index. For this verified 2018–2023 release, finance's fiscal year is Portal index + 1. Thus Portal year 2023 joins directory fall 2023, headcount July 2023–June 2024, and finance FY2024; it does not mean three identical calendar-year observation windows. Portal 2022 finance was independently matched to the NCES F2223 FY2023 files for public, nonprofit and for-profit institutions. The source does not supply institution-specific fiscal start/end dates here; no common fiscal calendar is invented. Future unverified years are rejected; no latest-year substitution occurs.

Current source catalogs list directory through 2025, headcount through 2024, and finance through 2023. This release deliberately supports the verified common modern range 2018–2023 (finance FY2019–FY2024). Fiscal reporting and academic enrollment periods are related but should not be treated as identical cohorts.

Numbers are passed through from the Portal without inflation adjustment or multiplying/dividing by 1,000. The Portal's stored large totals can show floating-point rounding relative to original NCES integer-dollar records. For example, a published NCES total may differ by a few dollars or a few hundred dollars at billion-dollar scale. Decimal-looking results do not imply audited cent precision. The Actor preserves that source precision.

Missing/not-reported (-1), not-applicable (-2), and suppressed (-3) monetary/headcount codes are never treated as dollars, students or zero. A chargeable record requires matching directory, all-student enrollment, and finance rows with all four numeric metrics present. Incomplete institutions are skipped. Valid zero values and legitimate negative revenue values are preserved. Revenue minimum filters are nonnegative; omit them to include a legitimate negative revenue record.

Comparison limits

IPEDS harmonization does not make every institution directly comparable. Most public institutions report under GASB, nonprofits under FASB, and for-profits under modified FASB. reporting_form carries the reported standard (2 GASB 34/35; 3 aligned GASB; 4 FASB; 5 aligned FASB; 6 modified FASB). form_type is a separate source-file identifier: 1 common form, 2 Form 1, 3 Form 1A, 4 Form 2, 5 Form 3. It is not an ownership code.

Revenue may include nonoperating investment returns, capital or other additions, and hospitals or affiliated operations; it is not operating revenue or discretionary purchasing power. Functional expenditure allocation, depreciation, pensions, scholarship allowances, and organizational scope differ across reporting forms and years. Do not interpret a cross-sector revenue/support ranking as an equivalent budget comparison. Use the same fiscal years, inspect reporting_form, and review institution scope first.

Parent/child and system reporting can consolidate, allocate or otherwise affect financial boundaries. Different UNITIDs are not a guarantee that their finances can be summed without double-counting. The Actor deduplicates institution-year keys, not entire financial systems. Enrollment is unduplicated within an institution, not across institutions or across years. It must not be summed with demographic subtotals or substituted for FTE in per-student cost measures.

JSON/CSV for Clay and n8n

The default Apify Dataset contains only institution records. In the run's Dataset tab choose JSON or CSV export. OUTPUT exposes both export URLs; the Output tab links to JSON, CSV and RUN-SUMMARY. For API integrations:

GET https://api.apify.com/v2/datasets/DATASET_ID/items?format=json&clean=true
GET https://api.apify.com/v2/datasets/DATASET_ID/items?format=csv&clean=true

Use your Apify authorization header for private data. In n8n, run the Actor and pass its defaultDatasetId to an HTTP Request node. In Clay, import the CSV or connect the JSON response through its supported HTTP workflow. Apify exports support offset/limit pagination; retain unitid and data_year as a composite CRM key.

Reliability and billing

Source requests use official APIs, batched UNITID filters, bounded pagination, per-request timeouts, and exponential backoff with Retry-After handling for 429 and transient errors. Foreign/redirected pagination URLs, repeated pages, malformed payloads and inconsistent source keys fail closed. No website scraping or proxy is involved.

The sole price event is apify-default-dataset-item: USD 0.005 for each successfully written unique institution-year record (USD 5 per 1,000). There is no Actor-start event, separate custom result event, or additional platform-usage pass-through for standard runs. No fee is charged for skipped/missing records, filter exclusions or duplicates. Apify may separately charge subsequent storage/export operations under its platform rules.

Uniqueness is per run, including resumed/resurrected attempts using that run's Dataset. Existing Dataset keys are read before output so a resumed run does not write or bill them again. A separate new run creates a new paid delivery. SDK 4.1.0 handles synthetic Dataset-item budget limits; set your maximum total charge in Apify Console. After the limit is reached, output stops. Apify's commission and platform costs are deducted from the publisher's proceeds.

Sources, attribution and license

IPEDS directory, enrollment-headcount and finance data, via the Urban Institute Education Data Portal, accessed October 28, 2026, made available under the Open Data Commons Attribution License (ODC-By) v1.0. Original federal source: US Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System. Preserve this attribution when redistributing records. This paid product provides retrieval, joins, validation and delivery of openly licensed source data. It is independently developed; no endorsement is implied.

• Portal documentation, definitions and source licensing
• College endpoint catalog
• IPEDS Finance User Guide
• Finance codebook
• IPEDS Data Center
• ODC-By v1.0
• Apify Pay-per-event documentation

Official endpoints used:

https://educationdata.urban.org/api/v1/college-university/ipeds/directory/{year}/
https://educationdata.urban.org/api/v1/college-university/ipeds/enrollment-headcount/{year}/99/?race=99&sex=99&ftpt=99&class_level=99&degree_seeking=99
https://educationdata.urban.org/api/v1/college-university/ipeds/finance/{year}/

Development and validation

Version 1.0.0. Python 3.13, Apify SDK 4.1.0, requests 2.32.5. Tests and source evidence are kept in the project on the build server; Docker and uploaded Actor sources exclude credentials, environments and test artifacts. Run python -m pytest -q with pytest installed to verify exact joins, totals, filters, source errors, deduplication and budget behavior. Real-data evidence covers Harvard, UC Berkeley, Brookline College-Phoenix and American River College.

Source data are historical, may be revised, and have coverage/reporting limitations. They are not current financial statements or purchasing commitments.