While nonprofit organizations have long been - and continue to be - required to make their returns available to the public upon request, student reporters have often been ignored or frustrated by school officials bent on maintaining secrecy.

Finding out how much your private college's top officials make may now be as easy as clicking your mouse button.

In October, the nonprofit group Philanthropic Research Inc., of Williamsburg, Va., posted the first of an estimated quarter million federal tax returns of nonprofit organizations and charities that it eventually plans to make available on its GuideStar website, www.guidestar.org.

The tax return, called the IRS Form 990, is required of all charities that fall under Section 501(c)(3) of the tax code, as well as most other nonprofit organizations, including private schools and college or university foundations.

In addition to salary information of top administrators and faculty, the returns also include information about a school's investments and annual budget, including, for example, how much money is spent on travel expenses, legal fees and postage and how much the school collects in tuition or from outside business ventures.

Students attending public schools have always had a legal right to this type of information under their state open records law. However, because such laws only require "public bodies" to open their files, obtaining information from private schools or from private foundations created to raise money on behalf of either public or private schools has often been an uphill battle.

While nonprofit organizations have long been - and continue to be - required to make their returns available to the public upon request, student reporters have often been ignored or frustrated by school officials bent on maintaining secrecy. Sometimes the consequences have been even more severe. In 1996, for example, two students at Hillsdale College in Michigan were actually kicked out of school after they tried to obtain copies of the school's Form 990.

Unfortunately, the process of scanning and posting the forms online is a slow one (the IRS is not scheduled to accept electronic filings of the Form 990 until 2007) and forms for many schools and charities are not yet available.

Still, once complete, the new website should prove to be a staple news source for student news media. Removing school officials from the process will undoubtedly improve access to the forms, giving students quick and reliable information about their schools and other charities that was previously not known.

The forms are provided free of charge to anyone with Internet access and the GuideStar website includes suggestions about how to interpret the tax information. (The Student Press Law Center also publishes a guide on using Form 990's specifically geared to student journalists.)

Visit the Student Press Law Center online at http://www.splc.org.