Provenance and freshness

Official data sources

Primary source

U.S. Department of Education · College Scorecard API

Current official API responses retrieved October 24, 2026. Local dataset generated November 1, 2026.

Preserved response inventory

Preserved source response files with query area and checksum.
Query area	Source file	SHA-256
Atlanta, GA	scorecard-atlanta-ga.json	380f69471b514f5c258d13d7c600fa23931bcf652a6eb7cc292d959d501f714a
Boston, MA	scorecard-boston-ma.json	c629177f06a43035704489d525166d82148bca6d3a557fbf2741bebf859a4d5f
Chicago, IL	scorecard-chicago-il.json	87bbae16640be23065820ac2047c6bf00bd790b1135456e483dfc3a89a569b8c
Dallas–Fort Worth, TX	scorecard-dallas-fort-worth-tx.json	1018b3be19624693e36038e978cf53e8fa3ba6237567640ef2b74118ad7f0459
Phoenix, AZ	scorecard-phoenix-az.json	8c49277bb5a1fd8ad61eb1a58cbcb98cf574560e9e1344d44e14c7aec55cd742

Freshness and reporting-period limits

Built from preserved official API responses retrieved October 24, 2026. Institution fields absent from the snapshots remain not retrieved.

Same-day staged and promoted cycles verify deterministic transformation and rollback protection. They do not prove long-term source freshness.

Geographic source

Metro membership uses U.S. Census Bureau July 2023 CBSA delineations based on OMB Bulletin 23-01. Coordinates were matched to county FIPS before the county-to-CBSA join; distance alone is not treated as metro membership.

License and attribution

The federal catalog lists College Scorecard as public data under CC BY. TradeField Scout attributes the U.S. Department of Education beside source details and retains retrieval metadata, and rechecks the license and current release at each data refresh.

Federal data catalog record ↗