Fashion Schools USA compares every U.S. college that reports a fashion design, apparel or merchandising program to the U.S. Department of Education. This page explains how the site is built, how it earns money, and how mistakes get fixed. It is written by the site’s owner and author, Ankit P., and applies to every page on the site.
How schools get into the dataset
A school is listed when it reports a program under the federal classification codes for apparel and textiles (CIP 19.09) or fashion merchandising (CIP 52.19) in the U.S. Department of Education’s College Scorecard and IPEDS data. We do not add schools because they advertise with us, and we do not remove them because they do not. Well-known studio programs that report under general art codes can be missing; if you know of one, send the program page through the contact form and we will add it with its source.
How cost figures are produced
Every table shows two numbers. Published tuition is the annual price the school reports to the Department of Education, in-state where the school distinguishes. Average net price is what federal aid recipients actually paid after grants and scholarships, as reported in College Scorecard. The retrieval date is printed under every table. Figures are checked against each school’s own published tuition page before a page is reviewed, and a school’s figure is corrected within seven days of a verified report.
How sponsored listings work
Some pages carry a block titled “Featured Online Fashion Design & Merchandising Programs Now Enrolling Students”. Those listings are served by Esyoh, an education marketing partner, and are labelled as featured. The site earns a fee when a reader clicks one of those listings or requests information from a school through them. Sponsored listings never change the order of a comparison table, never decide which schools appear as “standouts”, and never influence what a page says about a school. The money pays for the data work on this site.
How pages are written and reviewed
Pages on this site are drafted with AI assistance from the dataset and from each school’s published materials. No page is published until Ankit P. has reviewed it against the sources, and every content page shows the date it was last reviewed and a change log of what was altered. Opinions, such as which schools stand out in a state, are the author’s and are explained on the page. We do not publish rankings that claim a precision the data cannot support.
Corrections
If a figure, a program description or a claim is wrong, use the contact page. Verified corrections are made within seven days and recorded in the change log at the bottom of the affected page. Schools may request corrections the same way; we ask for a link to the published source.