Cost and Outcomes by State: How College Net Price, Graduation, and Earnings Vary Across the Country

Key findings

1. 1Nationally, across 3,254 colleges with both cost and graduation data, the median net price is $16,256, the median graduation rate is 49%, and median ten-year earnings are $45,066.
2. 2Among the 37 jurisdictions meeting the 25-institution threshold, median graduation rate ranges from 29% in New Mexico to 59% in Connecticut. This spread reflects each state's mix of institutions and selectivity, not a ranking of state quality.
3. 3Median net price among reported states ranges from $7,424 in New Mexico to $27,375 in Connecticut. Lower median cost is not lower value, and it often reflects a larger public and community-college sector in a state.
4. 414 of 51 jurisdictions have fewer than 25 institutions reporting both fields (Alaska, District of Columbia, Delaware, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, New Hampshire, Nevada, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Utah, Vermont, Wyoming) and are shown with a count but no median, so a small sample never produces a misleading figure. Their institution counts remain in the dataset.
5. 5State medians cannot tell you what a specific college will cost you after aid or how its students fare; they describe a state's institutional landscape, not an individual outcome. Compare your own net price and program outcomes on each profile.

Median net price, median graduation rate, and median ten-year earnings by state, across the 3,254 U.S. institutions with cost and graduation data in CampusPin's snapshot extracted 2026-06-18. States with fewer than 25 reporting institutions show a count only; medians are blank. Cost is average net price where reported, else published in-state tuition. Outcome source years vary by field.

Methodology

Source: a read-only, point-in-time snapshot of CampusPin's public production institution API (https://campuspin.com), extracted 2026-06-18, keyed by state. Per institution it keeps only state, control, type, average net price, in-state tuition, graduation rate, retention rate, median ten-year earnings, and median debt, the same fields shown on each public profile. Outcome fields originate with the U.S. Department of Education College Scorecard and IPEDS; cost is CampusPin's published figure.

Cost metric: average net price where the institution reports it, otherwise published in-state tuition. State medians are computed over the institutions in that state with both a usable cost and a graduation rate.

Minimum sample size: a state reports medians only when at least 25 of its institutions have both a usable cost and a graduation rate; 14 smaller jurisdictions fall below that line and show a count with blank medians rather than a figure from a handful of schools. A missing median is never rendered as 0. The earnings median additionally requires at least 25 institutions reporting earnings in the state.

All reported figures are MEDIANS within a state, robust to outliers, computed from the committed snapshot. Of 3,444 institutions snapshotted, 3,254 have both a usable cost and a graduation rate and feed the state medians; institutions missing the relevant field are excluded from that statistic rather than counted as zero.

The committed snapshot carries a SHA-256 checksum (dataset version 1.0.0); scripts/build-cost-outcomes-by-state.mjs --validate re-derives every figure here from it with no network call, so the analysis is reproducible.

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