Where our facts come from

Whittle's facts come from public government data. We organize it, explain it in plain English, and link careers to the colleges that teach them. We don't make up numbers, and every page cites its sources.

Careers: O*NET 31.0

Career descriptions, tasks, skills, knowledge, interests, work settings, education, and related careers come from the O*NET database, the U.S. Department of Labor's survey of what workers in each occupation actually do.

This site includes information from the O*NET 31.0 Database by the U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration (USDOL/ETA). Used under the CC BY 4.0 license. O*NET® is a trademark of USDOL/ETA. Whittle has modified all or some of this information. USDOL/ETA has not approved, endorsed, or tested these modifications.

Colleges and programs: IPEDS

The list of colleges, their locations, and the programs they offer (with award levels) come from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS), 2023-24 directory and completions files, published by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). A college appears for a program only if it reported awarding credentials in it.

Costs and outcomes: College Scorecard

Net price, cost of attendance, graduation rates, acceptance rates, enrollment, median earnings, and median debt come from the U.S. Department of Education's College Scorecard (June 2026 release). Colleges can't edit or hide these numbers, whether or not they partner with us.

Linking programs to careers: CIP-SOC crosswalk

Which college programs lead to which careers comes from the NCES CIP 2020 to SOC 2018 crosswalk.

Coming soon

• Pay and job outlook from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics and the Occupational Outlook Handbook).
• AI Outlook for every career: how much of the job's tasks AI can already help with and what stays human, built task by task from public research datasets (including the Anthropic Economic Index, CC BY 4.0). We'll publish the full method here. It will never show a "chance AI takes this job," because task exposure isn't the same as job loss.

How recommendations work

Your daily deck and shortlist come from a transparent scoring system built on these public descriptors and your own choices. No AI model makes decisions about you, and college payments never affect which careers you see or how they rank.

Spot an error?

Government data isn't perfect, and neither are we. Tell us and we'll look into it.