DISPATCH · №001
Dispatches from the front lines of the college-decision war.
ublic data, reported back to the people it's about. FREOPP earnings; IPEDS costs; BEA regional adjustments. The manipulation that defaults teens into six-figure debt is not invisible — it's just unflattered. We do the flattery in reverse.
College costs lagged the CPI benchmark at ~88% of eligible schools
IPEDS 2023-24 IC_AY + BLS CPI-U
At 1,955 of 2,224 eligible schools, reported total-cost growth lagged a ~17.7% calendar-year CPI-U benchmark. Academic-year prices and calendar-year inflation are not an exactly matched real-dollar comparison. One dispatch per week, this kind of finding. No villains. No prescriptions. Just the math.
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First dispatch lands when the issue cadence opens. No "welcome series." No "tell us your goals." Just one email a week when there's something worth reporting.
What lands in your inbox.
One dispatch per week. Public-data reportage on a teen-financial decision someone is already trying to make: a FREOPP cohort that's quietly negative; a multi-year IPEDS trend hiding inside a sticker price; a BEA cost-of-living gap nobody told you would matter; a reader's letter; a straight-talk explainer of a confusing piece of the financial-aid machine. Sometimes it's a school you'd never have looked at twice. Sometimes it's the one you were sure was worth it.
Tone calibrates for the audience you tag at signup: dispatches for teens read as smart 17-year-old who reads; for parents, parent of a teen making a real decision. Same underlying data, different angle of fire.
The archive.
- The FAFSA opened early, and its new flag watches the school
The 2027–28 form opened Sept. 23. File early for first-come state aid, then price the major and finishing yourself.
- A free point off your student loan, if you move by Sept. 30
Auto pay on federal Direct Loans now cuts the rate a full point through June 2028. Enroll by 11:59 p.m. ET, Sept. 30.
- We made the receipts public
Every number behind LE TEEN is now one open dataset with a DOI — Zenodo, Hugging Face, Kaggle. CC BY 4.0.
- College costs lagged the CPI benchmark at ~88% of eligible schools
87.9% (1,955/2,224) had reported cost growth below a calendar CPI-U proxy; corrected 2026-09-28. IPEDS + BLS.
- The math nobody runs
The 30-year math on 3,392 U.S. colleges. Most come out positive; the spread is the story. FREOPP + IPEDS + BEA.