A Note on This Blog How I Think About This Work
Thanks for stopping by College Azimuth.
This site exists to help everyday people—students, families, parents, counselors, policymakers—make sense of the enormous amount of information surrounding higher education. College, despite all the debate around it, remains one of the most consequential financial decisions a person and their family can make.
Most of the information available today is anchored around prestige or secondary factors—campus life, amenities, reputation. I’m not saying those things don’t matter. But for many families, they’re not the main concern.
The main concern is much more practical:
- How do we stay in school when the tuition bill feels overwhelming?
- What does it mean to take on debt—and how will it actually affect life after graduation?
- Is “go to the best school you can get into” always good advice?
Professionally, I come to this work with an MBA in Analytical Finance from the University of Chicago and experience working across these issues as a nonprofit executive, a venture-backed startup founder, and an advisor. I’ve spent years around student finance, higher-ed data, and policy—and I’ve seen how easy it is for well-meaning guidance to gloss over real trade-offs.
Personally, I come to this work from a different place. I joined the military out of high school because I couldn’t afford college. Later, even after returning to school, I nearly had to drop out—until my grandmother co-signed a high-interest loan that kept me enrolled. She did so reluctantly, and understandably so. She was afraid of being on the hook for a debt she wasn’t sure I’d be able to repay. That moment stayed with me. It shaped how I think about risk, cost, and what it really means to ask families to “invest” in education.
So what’s an azimuth?
It’s a navigational term—a reference point that helps you find your bearings. In the Army, I served as a scout, which, in simple terms, meant helping people find their way. Over the past decade, my personal azimuth has been a straightforward one: helping people be able to make better decisions with clearer information, earlier—before the consequences are locked in.
That’s where College Azimuth comes from.
The main site is designed to present complex higher-education data in a way that’s intuitive and usable—so people can understand costs, outcomes, and trade-offs more clearly. This blog is where I slow things down. It’s where I unpack what the data means, what it doesn’t mean, and the stories it can tell when you look closely.
My hope is that this is useful—whether you’re making a decision yourself, or helping someone else make one.
Best,
Daniel Rogers
Daniel@collegeazimuth.com