🎓 College Scorecard Scraper - U.S. Higher Education Data

🚀 Collect comprehensive data on 6,000+ U.S. colleges and universities from the Department of Education. Get tuition costs, admission rates, graduation rates, post-graduation earnings, demographics, financial aid, and institutional details.

🕒 Last updated: 2026-04-23

Whether you are a student comparing universities, a researcher analyzing higher education trends, or a consultant building college recommendation tools, this scraper delivers comprehensive data from the U.S. Department of Education's College Scorecard.

The College Scorecard Scraper provides 65+ data fields per school including tuition costs, admission rates, SAT/ACT scores, completion rates, median earnings at 6 and 10 years after enrollment, student demographics, financial aid statistics, and institutional details. Filter by state and degree type.

Target Audience	Students and parents, higher education researchers, EdTech companies, financial advisors, policy analysts, recruiters
Primary Use Cases	College comparison, ROI analysis, recommendation engines, enrollment trend research, financial aid analysis, school performance tracking

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📋 What Does It Do

• Collects school profiles with names, locations, accreditors, ownership type, and degree levels
• Extracts in-state and out-of-state tuition, average net price, and cost of attendance
• Gets admission rates, completion rates, retention rates, and SAT/ACT scores
• Includes median earnings at 6 and 10 years after enrollment, median debt, and monthly loan payments
• Provides student body size, gender breakdown, racial/ethnic composition, and first-generation stats
• Delivers faculty salary, student-faculty ratio, endowment, and instructional expenditure data

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🎬 How to Use - Full Demo

🚧 Demo video coming soon.

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⚙️ Input

Field	Type	Description	Default
Max Items	integer	Free users: limited to 10 items. Paid users: up to 1,000,000	10
State	string	Two-letter US state abbreviation (e.g., CA, TX, NY). Leave empty for all states	-
Degree Type	string	Filter by predominant degree: Certificate, Associate, Bachelor's, or Graduate	-

Example 1:

{
    "maxItems": 100,
    "state": "CA",
    "degreeType": "bachelor"
}

Example 2:

{
    "maxItems": 500,
    "state": "NY"
}

⚠️ Data comes from the U.S. Department of Education and reflects the most recent academic year available in the College Scorecard database.

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📊 Output

🧾 Schema: id, name, city, state, zip, url, ownership, admissionRate, satAverageScore, actMedian, inStateTuition, outOfStateTuition, avgNetPrice, studentSize, completionRate, retentionRate, medianEarnings6Years, medianEarnings10Years, medianDebt, monthlyLoanPayment, studentFacultyRatio, pellGrantRate, federalLoanRate, facultyAvgSalary, endowment, instructionalExpenditure, latitude, longitude, scrapedAt

📦 Sample 1:

{
    "id": 110635,
    "name": "University of California-Berkeley",
    "city": "Berkeley",
    "state": "CA",
    "zip": "94720",
    "url": "www.berkeley.edu",
    "ownership": "Public",
    "admissionRate": 0.1139,
    "satAverageScore": 1415,
    "inStateTuition": 14312,
    "outOfStateTuition": 44066,
    "avgNetPrice": 17830,
    "studentSize": 32143,
    "completionRate": 0.9333,
    "medianEarnings10Years": 85800,
    "medianDebt": 14764,
    "studentFacultyRatio": 20,
    "pellGrantRate": 0.3036,
    "latitude": 37.871899,
    "longitude": -122.258538,
    "scrapedAt": "2026-04-08T12:00:00.000Z"
}

📦 Sample 2:

{
    "id": 166027,
    "name": "Massachusetts Institute of Technology",
    "city": "Cambridge",
    "state": "MA",
    "ownership": "Private nonprofit",
    "admissionRate": 0.0396,
    "satAverageScore": 1535,
    "inStateTuition": 57590,
    "outOfStateTuition": 57590,
    "avgNetPrice": 21816,
    "studentSize": 4530,
    "completionRate": 0.9516,
    "medianEarnings10Years": 124200,
    "medianDebt": 12000,
    "scrapedAt": "2026-04-08T12:00:00.000Z"
}

📦 Sample 3:

{
    "id": 228778,
    "name": "University of Texas at Austin",
    "city": "Austin",
    "state": "TX",
    "ownership": "Public",
    "admissionRate": 0.3103,
    "satAverageScore": 1340,
    "inStateTuition": 11448,
    "outOfStateTuition": 40032,
    "avgNetPrice": 15200,
    "studentSize": 40804,
    "completionRate": 0.8722,
    "medianEarnings10Years": 72000,
    "scrapedAt": "2026-04-08T12:00:00.000Z"
}

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✨ Why Choose This Tool?

Feature	Details
65+ data fields	Comprehensive coverage of costs, outcomes, demographics, and institutional details
6,000+ schools	Every accredited college and university in the United States
Official federal data	Data from the U.S. Department of Education
State filtering	Focus on schools in any US state
Degree type filtering	Certificate, Associate, Bachelor's, or Graduate
Fast collection	Under 1 minute for the entire 6,000+ school dataset
Earnings and debt data	Median earnings at 6 and 10 years plus median debt at completion

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📈 How It Compares

Capability	This Tool	Other Solutions
Batch collection	Up to 1,000,000 schools per run	Browse one at a time
Data fields	65+ fields per school	Limited comparison view
Structured output	JSON, CSV, Excel	HTML pages only
Automated scheduling	Daily/weekly updates	Manual visits
Filtering	State and degree type	Basic search only
Earnings data	Median at 6 and 10 years	Limited availability

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🚀 How to Use

1. Sign Up - Create a free account w/ $5 credit (takes 2 minutes)
2. Find the Tool - Search for "College Scorecard Scraper" in the Apify Store
3. Set Input - Configure your search filters using the simple form
4. Run It - Click "Start" and let it collect your data
5. Download Data - Get your results in the "Dataset" tab as CSV, Excel, or JSON

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💼 Business Use Cases

Audience	How They Use It
Students and Parents	Compare schools by cost, admission rate, graduation rate, and post-graduation earnings to make informed decisions
EdTech Companies	Build college comparison tools and recommendation engines with real federal data on 6,000+ institutions
Financial Advisors	Assess school ROI by comparing tuition costs against median earnings and debt levels
Policy Analysts	Track institutional performance metrics across public and private universities nationwide

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✨ Why choose this Actor

	Capability
🎯	Built for the job. Scoped specifically to this data source so you skip the parser engineering entirely.
🔖	Structured output. Clean, typed fields ready for analysis, dashboards, or downstream pipelines.
⚡	Fast. Optimized request patterns return results in seconds, not minutes.
🔁	Always fresh. Every run pulls live data, so the dataset reflects the source as of run time.
🌐	No infra to manage. Apify handles proxies, retries, scaling, scheduling, and storage.
🛡️	Reliable. Battle-tested across many runs and edge cases, with graceful error handling.
🚫	No code required. Configure in the UI, run from CLI, schedule via cron, or call from any language with the Apify SDK.

📊 Production-grade structured data without the engineering overhead of building and maintaining your own scraper.

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📈 How it compares to alternatives

Approach	Cost	Coverage	Refresh	Filters	Setup
⭐ College Scorecard Scraper - U.S. Higher Education Data (this Actor)	$5 free credit, then pay-per-use	Full source coverage	Live per run	Source-native filters supported	⚡ 2 min
Build your own scraper	Engineering hours	Full once built	Whenever you maintain it	Custom code	🐢 Days to weeks
Paid managed APIs	$$$ monthly	Vendor-defined	Live	Vendor-defined	⏳ Hours
Third-party data dumps	Varies	Subset, often stale	Periodic	None	🕒 Variable

Pick this Actor when you want broad coverage, server-side filtering, and no pipeline maintenance.

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🚀 How to use

1. 📝 Sign up. Create a free account with $5 credit (takes 2 minutes).
2. 🌐 Open the Actor. Go to the College Scorecard Scraper - U.S. Higher Education Data page on the Apify Store.
3. 🎯 Set input. Configure the input fields in the form (or paste a JSON), then set maxItems.
4. 🚀 Run it. Click Start and let the Actor collect your data.
5. 📥 Download. Grab your results in the Dataset tab as CSV, Excel, JSON, or XML.

⏱️ Total time from signup to downloaded dataset: 3-5 minutes. No coding required.

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💼 Business use cases

📊 Data & Analytics Build trend reports and dashboards from live source data Feed BI tools, warehouses, and ML pipelines with structured records Run periodic snapshots to track changes over time Compare segments, regions, or categories with consistent fields	🏢 Operations & Strategy Monitor competitor moves, pricing, and inventory shifts Build internal directories and lookup tools backed by current data Power workflows that depend on fresh source records Cut manual data-gathering time from hours to minutes
🎯 Marketing & Growth Identify market opportunities and trending topics Research target audiences and customer personas at scale Power lead-generation pipelines with verified records Track sentiment, reviews, or social signals over time	🛠️ Engineering & Product Prototype features that need real-world data without owning a crawler Replace fragile in-house scrapers with a managed Actor Wire datasets into your apps via the Apify API or webhooks Skip the proxy, retry, and parsing maintenance entirely

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🌟 Beyond business use cases

Data like this powers more than commercial workflows. The same structured records support research, education, civic projects, and personal initiatives.

🎓 Research and academia Empirical datasets for papers, thesis work, and coursework Longitudinal studies tracking changes across snapshots Reproducible research with cited, versioned data pulls Classroom exercises on data analysis and ethical scraping	🎨 Personal and creative Side projects, portfolio demos, and indie app launches Data visualizations, dashboards, and infographics Content research for bloggers, YouTubers, and podcasters Hobbyist collections and personal trackers
🤝 Non-profit and civic Transparency reporting and accountability projects Advocacy campaigns backed by public-interest data Community-run databases for local issues Investigative journalism on public records	🧪 Experimentation Prototype AI and machine-learning pipelines with real data Validate product-market hypotheses before engineering spend Train small domain-specific models on niche corpora Test dashboard concepts with live input

🤖 Ask an AI assistant about this scraper

Open a ready-to-send prompt about this ParseForge actor in the AI of your choice:

• 💬 ChatGPT
• 🧠 Claude
• 🔍 Perplexity
• 🅒 Copilot

💰 How much does it cost?

Apify gives you $5 in free monthly credits on the Apify Free plan, enough to test College Scorecard Scraper - U.S. Higher Education Data and pull a real sample dataset. For ongoing usage:

• Starter plan ($49/month) — Recommended for individuals running College Scorecard Scraper - U.S. Higher Education Data regularly. Includes higher concurrency and larger datasets.
• Scale plan ($499/month) — Recommended for teams running College Scorecard Scraper - U.S. Higher Education Data at production scale.

Pay-Per-Event pricing means you only pay for what you actually use. Failed runs are never charged. See the Pricing tab on this Actor's page for exact event prices.

💡 Tips for using College Scorecard Scraper - U.S. Higher Education Data

• Start with a small maxItems (3-10) to validate output format before running larger jobs.
• Use Apify Schedules to run College Scorecard Scraper - U.S. Higher Education Data on a recurring basis and keep your dataset fresh.
• Export via Integrations: Apify connects to Google Sheets, Airbyte, Make, Zapier, and direct webhooks — pipe your data anywhere.
• Monitor with webhooks: trigger downstream workflows the moment a run finishes.
• Re-run failed items: if any individual records error out, re-run with their inputs only. Failed events are not charged.

⚖️ Is it legal to use College Scorecard Scraper - U.S. Higher Education Data?

Yes. College Scorecard Scraper - U.S. Higher Education Data only collects publicly available data. Web scraping public data has been confirmed as legal by US courts (see hiQ Labs v. LinkedIn) and is widely used for research, market analysis, and business intelligence.

However, you are responsible for:

• Respecting the source website's Terms of Service.
• Complying with GDPR, CCPA, and other applicable data-protection laws when personal data is involved.
• Not republishing copyrighted content without permission.

If you have specific compliance concerns, consult your legal team. See the Apify legal docs for more.

❓ Frequently Asked Questions

🔌 Automating Your Workflow

Schedule this tool to run daily, weekly, or monthly through the Apify platform. Set it and forget it. Your data will be waiting in your dataset every time. Combine with webhooks to trigger downstream actions whenever a run completes.

🔌 Integrate with Your Favorite Apps

• Make - Build automated workflows
• Zapier - Connect 5,000+ apps
• Slack - Get instant notifications
• Airbyte - Sync to data warehouses
• GitHub - Version control integration
• Google Drive - Export to spreadsheets

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🔌 Integrate with any app

College Scorecard Scraper - U.S. Higher Education Data connects to any cloud service via Apify integrations:

• Make - Automate multi-step workflows
• Zapier - Connect with 5,000+ apps
• Slack - Get run notifications in your channels
• Airbyte - Pipe results into your warehouse
• GitHub - Trigger runs from commits and releases
• Google Drive - Export datasets straight to Sheets

You can also use webhooks to trigger downstream actions when a run finishes. Push fresh data into your product backend, or alert your team in Slack.

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Pro Tip: 💡 Browse our complete collection of data collection actors to find the perfect tool for your business needs.

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🆘 Need Help?

• Check the FAQ section above for common questions
• Visit the Apify documentation for platform guides
• Contact us at Tally contact form

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⚠️ Disclaimer: This Actor is an independent tool and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to the U.S. Department of Education or the College Scorecard. It accesses only publicly available data through official public APIs.