Who's going to College in America?

On Twitter I came across an Atlantic article entitled, "Who's Going to (and Graduating from) College in Seven Charts." I liked the idea instantly, but was disappointed by the charts. Go ahead and see if you can discern the story from the charts on the article. I suspect not; I couldn't, even though I knew some of this data already. To be fair to the author, part of the problem is due to embedding a visualization in a space that's too small; part of it is conceptual design.

But I did notice a few of the charts were in Tableau, so I downloaded the workbooks and gave them a quick, 45-minute makeover. (The others are really bad screen shots of god-knows-what, and will see if I can find that data later).

I'm interested in whether you think these views are better or not: Do they tell a story about Higher Education?

Here is the first, showing graduates by ethnicity and gender:

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Here is the second, showing who's enrolled in two-and four-year colleges:

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