The Future of America, in Visualizations

Someone once joked that no industry has a longer view of its future than higher education. In some sense, this is true; if students weren't born 17 years ago, they almost certainly are not going to enroll next fall. The only exception, I pointed out, was the funeral industry, which knows about 80 years ahead of time what its market will look like.

Via the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education (WICHE) we now have a compelling and interesting look at the future. Their series, "Knocking at the College Door," has, for a long time, provided a glimpse of the future of public school enrollments. Thus, in a very real way, we're seeing a glimpse of the future of America.

This visualization shows three different views of the data: A total with ethnicity breakouts; a comparison of regions; and a simple bar chart showing percent of total. If you're interested in a zoomed view, you can filter to any region or state on the first and third.

Note: For some reason, the filters are not formatting correctly. If you'd like to see it work correctly click here.

And now, the future:

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