NCES College Navigator Scraper

Extract public institution profiles from NCES College Navigator for higher-ed market research, vendor lead lists, admissions benchmarking, recruiting analysis, and school comparison workflows.

The actor searches nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator, follows institution detail pages, and saves structured rows with IPEDS IDs, names, addresses, websites, enrollment, tuition, admissions, retention, graduation, and related public profile fields.

What does NCES College Navigator Scraper do?

NCES College Navigator Scraper turns public College Navigator pages into a clean Apify dataset.

It can:

• 🔎 Search College Navigator by keyword
• 🏫 Extract exact institution URLs
• 🆔 Capture IPEDS unit IDs
• 🌐 Save school websites
• 📍 Normalize address, city, state, and ZIP fields
• ☎️ Capture public phone/contact fields
• 🎓 Extract awards, sector, control, and campus settings
• 📊 Save enrollment, tuition, retention, and graduation summaries

Who is it for?

This actor is useful for teams that need repeatable public higher-education data.

• Higher-ed vendors building target account lists
• Admissions researchers comparing peer institutions
• Recruiting teams sourcing colleges by program or region
• Consultants benchmarking schools and market segments
• Data teams enriching CRM records with IPEDS identifiers
• Analysts monitoring public NCES profile changes

Why use this actor?

College Navigator is public but not optimized for bulk analysis.

This actor helps you avoid manual copying by turning pages into rows that can be exported to CSV, JSON, Excel, Google Sheets, BI tools, CRMs, and enrichment pipelines.

Data you can extract

Field	Description
unitId	IPEDS institution identifier
institutionName	Public institution name
sourceUrl	College Navigator detail URL
address, city, state, zip	Location fields
phone	General information phone
website	Institution website shown by NCES
institutionType, sector, control	Institution classification
awardsOffered	Awards and credential levels
studentPopulation	Student population summary
totalEnrollment	Total enrollment where visible
tuitionAndFees	Latest visible tuition and fees
retentionRates	NCES retention summary text
graduationRates	NCES graduation summary text

How much does it cost to scrape NCES College Navigator?

The actor uses pay-per-event pricing.

You pay a small start fee per run and a per-institution fee for every saved dataset item. The exact current prices are shown on the Apify actor page before launch.

Use a small maxItems value for trial runs, then increase it for production lists.

How to use NCES College Navigator Scraper

1. Open the actor on Apify.
2. Enter a keyword such as university, nursing, engineering, or a school name.
3. Optionally enter a two-letter state code.
4. Optionally paste exact College Navigator institution URLs.
5. Set maxItems.
6. Run the actor.
7. Export the dataset.

Input options

keyword

Search term used on College Navigator.

Examples:

• university
• community college
• nursing
• computer science
• technical institute

state

Optional two-letter state code.

The actor applies this after loading institution detail pages, because the public College Navigator state selector is an ASP.NET multi-select that is not always reliable as a simple URL parameter.

institutionUrls

Use exact College Navigator URLs when you already know the schools.

Example:

[
  { "url": "https://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/?id=110635" }
]

maxItems

Maximum number of institution rows to save.

includeDetails

Keep this enabled for full institution profile data.

Example input

{
  "keyword": "university",
  "state": "CA",
  "maxItems": 25,
  "includeDetails": true
}

Example output

{
  "unitId": "488031",
  "institutionName": "Abraham Lincoln University",
  "city": "Glendale",
  "state": "California",
  "website": "www.alu.edu/",
  "institutionType": "4-year, Private for-profit",
  "studentPopulation": 112,
  "tuitionAndFees": "$6,480",
  "sourceUrl": "https://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/?id=488031"
}

Tips for better results

• Start broad, then filter in your spreadsheet.
• Use state filters for regional lists.
• Use direct URLs for deterministic benchmark sets.
• Keep trial runs small.
• Increase maxItems only after confirming the output shape.

Integrations

Use this actor with:

• Google Sheets for school-list workflows
• Airtable for vendor account research
• HubSpot or Salesforce enrichment pipelines
• Snowflake, BigQuery, or Postgres warehouses
• Apify webhooks for scheduled monitoring
• Zapier or Make for no-code routing

API usage

Node.js

import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

const client = new ApifyClient({ token: process.env.APIFY_TOKEN });
const run = await client.actor('automation-lab/nces-college-navigator-scraper').call({
  keyword: 'university',
  state: 'CA',
  maxItems: 25,
  includeDetails: true,
});
console.log(run.defaultDatasetId);

Python

from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient('MY-APIFY-TOKEN')
run = client.actor('automation-lab/nces-college-navigator-scraper').call(run_input={
    'keyword': 'nursing',
    'maxItems': 100,
    'includeDetails': True,
})
print(run['defaultDatasetId'])

cURL

curl -X POST 'https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/automation-lab~nces-college-navigator-scraper/runs?token=MY-APIFY-TOKEN' \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{"keyword":"university","state":"CA","maxItems":25,"includeDetails":true}'

MCP usage

Use the Apify MCP server with Claude Code, Claude Desktop, Cursor, or another MCP-capable assistant when you want an agent to launch school-data runs and then analyze the returned dataset.

MCP URL:

https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=automation-lab/nces-college-navigator-scraper

Claude Code setup:

$claude mcp add apify-nces-college-navigator "https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=automation-lab/nces-college-navigator-scraper"

Claude Desktop / JSON config example:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "apify-nces-college-navigator": {
      "url": "https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=automation-lab/nces-college-navigator-scraper"
    }
  }
}

Example prompts:

• "Scrape NCES College Navigator for California universities and summarize tuition ranges."
• "Build a CSV of public nursing school profiles from College Navigator."
• "Extract these IPEDS College Navigator URLs and compare enrollment fields."

Scheduling

You can schedule runs on Apify to refresh school lists monthly or quarterly.

This is useful when your team tracks institution profiles, enrollment snapshots, or public website/contact changes.

Data quality notes

NCES pages can omit fields for some schools.

The actor returns null when a public field is unavailable or not shown in the page HTML.

Graph-based summaries such as retention and graduation are captured from NCES-provided alternative text when available.

Legality

The actor extracts public information from a US government website.

Always use the data responsibly, respect Apify terms, respect NCES website policies, and follow applicable privacy and compliance requirements in your jurisdiction.

FAQ

Can I scrape all US colleges?

Yes, set a broad keyword and a higher maxItems, or run several targeted searches. For very large extracts, use sensible limits and schedules.

Why did my state-filtered run inspect more schools than it saved?

College Navigator's state selector is not exposed as a simple stable GET parameter. The actor filters by state after loading detail pages.

Why are some tuition or admissions fields empty?

NCES does not publish every field for every institution. Missing public data is returned as null.

Does this actor require a proxy?

No proxy is required for the current HTTP implementation.

Related scrapers

Explore other Automation Lab actors at https://apify.com/automation-lab/ for education, lead generation, and public-data workflows.

Support

If a run fails or a field appears stale, open an Apify issue with the run ID and example institution URL.

Changelog

Initial version extracts public NCES College Navigator institution profile fields from search and direct URLs.