Methodology and sources

What each figure is

• Programs and completions: IPEDS Completions 2023-24 (C2024_A), one row per school, field of study (six-digit CIP 2020) and award level. We keep certificates and associate degrees in 29 program types; the CIP codes for each type are fixed in one file and never guessed per school.
• Program cost and length: IPEDS Cost (COST1) 2024-25. Clock-hour schools report whole-program tuition, fees, books and length for their largest programs; community colleges report per-year tuition, shown on the school page.
• Net price, completion, earnings and debt: College Scorecard, June 10, 2026. We leave out Scorecard's loan default rate: the federal repayment pause makes it 0% for nearly every school (3,113 of 3,131 when we checked), so it tells you nothing. Program earnings and debt come from the field-of-study file, which groups programs by four-digit CIP and credential; where one group holds two of our types (practical nursing and nurse aides; cosmetology, barbering, esthetics and nails) the figure is labelled as the group's, and nurse aide pages never show the nursing group's earnings. Small cohorts are suppressed by the source and shown as not published.
• Pay: BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025, by metro area where the school is in one, else by state.
• CDL training: FMCSA Training Provider Registry, training locations download dated October 27, 2026: public, active locations only. Private (employer-only) programs are counted but not listed.
• WIOA list badge: U.S. Department of Labor TrainingProviderResults.gov file (ETA-9171), programs on state lists as of June 30, 2025, matched to a school, CDL location or state-list program when the state, the field of study (CIP code), the provider name or website and the place (ZIP, city or within 2 miles) agree; never by name alone. 12,698 program matches. A hand check of 125 matches found 123 right, 1 wrong (the rule was fixed) and 1 unconfirmed. Listed cost, weeks, completion, employment and earnings are shown as DOL publishes them: "Suppressed" where DOL withheld a figure, "Not reported" where the cell is empty. Oklahoma had not sent its 2024 report, so its rows are shown only as out of date. Programs on the list that match nothing else we hold get their own page (1,277 in the first seven states) when they carry at least three published figures.
• Apprenticeship: apprenticeship.gov's partner sponsor file (organization fields only, never the contact people) and its approved occupations list (training approach and term hours), with BLS May 2025 pay. The public files do not say which occupations a sponsor trains, so no page links a sponsor to an occupation.
• State nurse aide lists: Texas HHSC, California CDPH, Florida Board of Nursing, New York Department of Health, Pennsylvania Department of Education, Ohio Department of Health and the Illinois nurse aide testing program list, each with its own date on the page. Florida CNA pass rates: Florida Board of Nursing, 2025. Also loaded, not yet indexed: Missouri DHSS school and facility training agency lists (programs past the list's own expiration date left out), the Maryland Board of Nursing grid (approved CNA-I programs only; Maryland stopped certifying graduates of CNA-only programs on April 1, 2026), North Carolina's Nurse Aide I list (June 1, 2025) and the Washington State Board of Nursing list.
• LPN pass rates: each state board's file, shown as printed with the board and period. Pass rates are not shown for Florida, Ohio and North Carolina programs. Also loaded, not yet indexed: board lists and rates for Maryland (state fiscal years), Minnesota, Oklahoma, Kentucky (testers within one year of completion), Oregon, Alabama (2025 rate only), Louisiana (by year of completion), and lists only for Missouri and Indiana. Maryland posts its FY 2025 table as a scanned page: it was typed by hand and checked against the printed totals. The Texas file is labelled "Draft" in its footer although the board posts it as current. New York's practical nursing lists and NCLEX-PN results are published on a State Education Department site we do not read automatically; they are requested from the New York State Education Department and are not shown until they arrive.

How to read a school, program or list page

These explanations used to be repeated on every page. They live here once, and each page links to them.

• Program cost: the whole-program tuition and fees a clock-hour school reports to IPEDS for its largest programs (2024-25). Clock-hour schools charge by program, not by year, so a school page sends you to each program's own page for its cost; community colleges report per-year tuition.
• Earnings: College Scorecard medians for graduates of the school in that field, one year after completing; small cohorts are not published. A blank means the source does not publish the figure for that program; we never estimate it. Each line on a page names the federal file it comes from.
• WIOA list: the program appears on the state's eligible training provider list in the U.S. Department of Labor file (ETA-9171, programs listed as of June 30, 2025). People who meet WIOA's rules for training services can have their local workforce board pay for a listed program; limits vary by area (how WIOA training funds work). Outcomes cover all students who exited between July 2021 and June 2025, not only WIOA-funded ones. Median earnings are one quarter's pay in the second quarter after exit. "Suppressed" means DOL withheld the figure (a small group, nothing reported, or a data quality hold); for length it can also mean a competency-based program. Since October 15, 2026 a weeks value that a state repeats on half or more of its rows is treated as filler, not a length (Colorado lists 260 weeks and New York 1 week on most rows, whatever the program), so those rows show no length. State pages show a middle cost, completion, employment or earnings figure for a program type only when 3 or more of its listed programs report it. Ask the provider and your workforce board whether a program is still on the list before you enroll.
• CDL registry: since February 7, 2022, people getting a first Class A or B CDL, or a passenger, school bus or hazmat endorsement, must first complete entry-level driver training from a provider on FMCSA's Training Provider Registry (49 CFR 380, subpart F). Theory, range and public-road columns are what the location registered to teach. Mobile programs train at a student's or employer's site and have no fixed address on the registry.
• Who pays for nurse aide training: federal rules say a nursing home that employs you, or has offered you a job, when your training starts cannot charge you for state-approved nurse aide training or its textbooks (42 CFR 483.152(c)). If you pay and are hired by a nursing home within 12 months, your state must provide for paying part of it back (how free CNA training works).
• Metro areas and miles: a metro area is the federal (OMB) metropolitan statistical area, so suburbs count with their city. Miles are measured from the city's center to the school's address or ZIP code center.
• State fees: fees set by the state or its testing vendor, copied as printed; tuition, books, uniforms, background checks and medical exams are separate. Fees change: check the source before you pay.

What we publish, and what we index

• Search engines are asked to index a school, program or CDL page only when it carries at least 3 sourced facts of its own (a program page needs 2 cost or outcome figures among them), a metro page only with at least 5 providers and a BLS metro wage, and a state page only with at least 5 providers.
• CDL locations are indexed only with in-person behind-the-wheel training and a phone or website. No page is built for a trainer whose registry name reads as a person's.
• Location pages exist per federal metro area, never per town.
• Since October 10, 2026 a page must also carry at least 2 figures of its own beyond the registry or list row it comes from: a cost, an outcome, a length, a pass-rate series, a price the school publishes, a WIOA listing's figures, or the CMS record of the nursing home that runs a nurse aide program. A CDL location with only its registry record, or a nurse aide program with only its list row, stays on the site and in every list but is not offered to search engines. A metro page is offered only when at least 3 of its programs carry a cost or a pass rate.
• The launch covers 12 program types in TX, CA, FL, NY, PA, IL, OH; other pages are built and linked but not offered to search engines until the first wave proves useful.

How often we re-read our sources

We keep a register of every official source this site uses, with a planned re-read for each. As of October 27, 2026 it holds 79 sources in use: 1 read weekly, 49 read monthly and 28 read once a year, and 1 with no set schedule yet. 78 were read in the 30 days before that; the oldest read is from October 9, 2026.

The register flags a source when a read fails, when it suddenly loses more than 15% of its rows, or when it falls twice as late as planned, and every flag goes on a weekly review list. Separately, once a month every quoted fact behind our guides, rules, fees and prices is read again on its source page, and every outbound link on the site is checked.

What the labels mean

WIOA list

The program is on the state's eligible training provider list in the Department of Labor file, matched by state, field of study, provider name or website, and place. People who qualify can have their local workforce board pay for it; the badge is not a promise of funding.

State list

The nurse aide program is on the state's approved training program list, with the list's date.

Board list

The practical nursing program is on the state board of nursing's list, with its pass rates where the board prints them.

WIOA list only

A provider that appears on the WIOA list but has no federal school record.

Nursing home

The nurse aide program is run by a nursing home, matched to its CMS record. Facility programs often train only their own hires, so they are labeled and never counted as open classes.

Limits

• Federal files lag: completions are for 2023-24 and program costs for 2024-25, so a program can change its price or close before the next release.
• Earnings and debt cover only graduates who received federal aid, and small groups are not published.
• A list badge means the program is on a list. Whether you can get funding is decided by the agency that pays, such as your local workforce office, and a seat may not be open.
• Pass rates appear only as each board prints them; New York, Florida, Ohio and North Carolina rates are not shown.

Found something wrong? See corrections for how to tell us and what we have fixed.

Files