What it costs. What it pays.
What college really costs - and what its grads really earn.
Costs in plain sight Earnings for every major Prices by family income
College Receipt lines up what colleges actually charge families at each income level, what each major earns, and what students borrow - before anyone signs anything. Pick up to four colleges, set your family income, and read the receipt.
Listed price vs. your price
Every college publishes a listed price: the full cost of attendance before any aid. Your price is different. It is the net price - the listed price minus the grants and scholarships your family actually receives - and the gap between the two routinely runs to tens of thousands of dollars a year. That is why this site leads with net price by family income, never the listed price alone.
Compare Colleges by Net Price
Net price is what a family actually pays after grant aid - not the listed price. Start typing a college name, add it to your tray, then change the income bracket and watch every price reprice.
College Receipt
Net price per year, by family income
Prices are average net prices from the College Scorecard. Your actual offer depends on your aid application.
Comparing 105+ colleges with published prices. Full detail lives on each college profile.
Start With a State
Browse every college in a state, with average net price and acceptance rate side by side.
Popular Majors
What a major pays nationally, and which colleges publish a figure large enough to trust.
Registered Nursing Computer Science Business and Commerce Psychology Accounting
Browse
Ways into the catalog that start from the kind of college, not a name.
- Public Universities - every public college with a full profile.
- Liberal Arts Colleges - the liberal arts colleges in the current college set.
- Community Colleges - two-year and technical colleges in our state listings.
- Under $15,000 Net Price - profiled colleges whose average net price sits under $15,000 a year.
- Highest-Earning Majors - majors ranked by their national median earnings.
- Best Value by State - state by state, starting from the lowest average net prices.
Trades and Certificates
Not every good-paying path runs through a bachelor degree. Certificate and trade programs - welding, licensed practical nursing, HVAC, commercial driving, and hundreds more - are part of the College Receipt catalog build-out, and they will get the same treatment as degrees: what the program costs, what its graduates earn, and the sample size behind every figure, under the same publishing rules we apply to majors. Until those program pages land, the majors index shows what degree programs pay, and Why We Show Sample Sizes explains the standard every figure on this site has to meet.