specification: API Commons Packages
specificationVersion: '0.1'
provider: Federal Student Aid
providerId: federal-student-aid
generated: '2026-09-09'
method: searched
source: >-
  registry.npmjs.org, pypi.org, rubygems.org registry metadata endpoints, queried 2026-09-09
modified: '2026-09-09'
description: >-
  Client library census for the surfaces on this record. The headline finding is an
  absence: neither Federal Student Aid nor the U.S. Department of Education publishes
  a first-party SDK for any of its APIs on any package registry. Everything below is
  third-party and unofficial, and every one of them is either stale or a single-author
  side project. No SDKs pointer is wired into apis.yml, because doing so would credit
  the provider with client tooling it did not ship.
official_sdk_count: 0
package_count: 3
official: false
registries_searched:
  - registry: npm
    query: '"college scorecard", "collegescorecard", "student aid"'
    first_party_hits: 0
  - registry: pypi
    query: '"college-scorecard", "collegescorecard", "pyscorecard"'
    first_party_hits: 0
  - registry: rubygems
    query: '"college scorecard"'
    first_party_hits: 0
    note: zero results of any kind
  - registry: maven-central
    query: college scorecard / federal student aid
    first_party_hits: 0
  - registry: nuget
    query: college scorecard
    first_party_hits: 0
  - registry: crates.io
    query: college scorecard
    first_party_hits: 0
  - registry: pkg.go.dev
    query: college scorecard
    first_party_hits: 0
packages:
  - name: college-scorecard
    registry: pypi
    language: python
    official: false
    url: https://pypi.org/project/college-scorecard/
    repository: https://github.com/ahoodatheguy/scorecard
    version: '1.4'
    published: '2023-04-23'
    covers: College Scorecard API
    note: >-
      Single-author unofficial wrapper. Its own README still sends users to
      https://collegescorecard.ed.gov/data/documentation/ for a key — a URL that
      now returns 404, which is the same dead link this record carried before this
      pass corrected it.
  - name: PyScorecard
    registry: pypi
    language: python
    official: false
    url: https://pypi.org/project/PyScorecard/
    repository: https://github.com/deino475/PyScorecard
    version: 0.2.1
    published: '2019-12-06'
    covers: College Scorecard API
    note: >-
      Self-described "unofficial Python library". Last released 2019 — it predates
      the field-of-study dataset, the __range and __not operators as documented
      today, and every data release from 3.2.0 onward.
  - name: '@pipeworx/mcp-college-scorecard'
    registry: npm
    language: javascript
    official: false
    url: https://www.npmjs.com/package/@pipeworx/mcp-college-scorecard
    repository: https://github.com/pipeworx-io/mcp-college-scorecard
    version: 0.1.0
    published: '2026-06-26'
    covers: College Scorecard API
    kind: mcp-server
    note: >-
      A third-party MCP server wrapping the College Scorecard API. Recorded here for
      completeness and deliberately NOT wired as an MCPServer pointer: the Department
      of Education did not publish it, and an MCPServer pointer asserts that the
      provider ships an agent surface. See mcp/federal-student-aid-mcp.yml.
decay_signal:
  finding: >-
    The two Python clients were last released in 2023 and 2019. The API they wrap has
    shipped nine dated changes since July 2024, including a January 2025 fix that
    changed how suppressed integers serialise (0 became null). A consumer on either
    library is reading a response shape the provider has since altered.
  strongest_evidence: pypi release dates