Advertising Revenue Model

We use third-party advertising platforms as our only model for revenue on our site. These ad platform solutions specialize in matching for-profit and not-for-profit online and campus schools or their marketing agencies with prospective students. Their systems allow us to tailor program types to our page content. We may generate revenue when a visitor interacts with an ad and a student visits a school website through the third-party system from one of our pages.

We attempt to identify our advertising placements with terms like “ad” or “sponsored.” Typically, the third-party advertising platform includes such signaling for ads. We strive to be transparent when distinguishing between our advertisements and editorial content.

Editorial Independence

One of the benefits of using a third-party ad platform is that we have no direct relationships with schools and their agencies, so they do not influence our content in any way.

Our approach is to create helpful content for our site’s visitors. We use both proprietary rankings and third-party lists from sources such as US News & World Report and The Princeton Review. We also provide methodologies for our proprietary ranking lists. They are data-driven and not influenced by advertised schools.

Further, only not-for-profit schools are included in our rankings, lists, and editorial content. We made the decision to exclude for-profit schools when we started building career and education sites in 2010. From time to time, schools convert from for-profit to not-for-profit status. We consider a school’s for-profit history and reputation when evaluating content updates.

The data sources we use include the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), the Common Data Set (CDS) Initiative, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), Projections Central, state licensing websites, accrediting agencies, and various third-party rankings. All are recognized for providing reliable information about education and occupations in the United States.

For more about this site and our editorial team and process, please refer to our About page.