Skip to main content

The Growth of the For-profit Institution in Higher Education

There is a story in this data, but you can't see it yet.  You'll have to click your mouse to see it.

But let's start with what is there: Total enrollment in degree-granting, public and private not-for-profit colleges and universities in the US from 1995 to 2012.  What you see is mostly stability, if you assume the whole world of higher education is made up of these two sectors only: Some growth in each in the top chart (the population has grown, of course, over that time); a relatively stable distribution of private and public enrollments (where private colleges have always enrolled about 20% of the students); and percentage changes since 1995 that are virtually identical. (Hover over the line at any point to get the details).

Now, for the work: In the filter in the right, check the box labeled Private Not-for-profit, to add that population to the mix.  The blue line appears, and you begin to see its effect on the other two sectors: By 2012, the for-profit sector enrolled over 11% of all students.  Although the percent of total had fallen a bit by 2012, it still represented over 10% of all students enrolled.

What's more astonishing is the rate of growth: From 240,000 in 1995 to 1.8 million students in 2012, a 650% increase.

Before I publish the next chapter, what percentage of federal grant and loan aid do you think goes to these three types?



Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The Highly Rejective Colleges

If you're not following Akil Bello on Twitter, you should be.  His timeline is filled with great insights about standardized testing, and he takes great effort to point out racism (both subtle and not-so-subtle) in higher education, all while throwing in references to the Knicks and his daughter Enid, making the experience interesting, compelling, and sometimes, fun. Recently, he created the term " highly rejective colleges " as a more apt description for what are otherwise called "highly selective colleges."  As I've said before, a college that admits 15% of applicants really has a rejections office, not an admissions office.  The term appears to have taken off on Twitter, and I hope it will stick. So I took a look at the highly rejectives (really, that's all I'm going to call them from now on) and found some interesting patterns in the data. Take a look:  The 1,132 four-year, private colleges and universities with admissions data in IPEDS are incl

The College Finder

Note: A few people have commented on slow loading with the visualization.  If you have troubles, click here to be taken right to the visualization .  It should open in a new tab and you can follow along from there.    This is always a popular post with high school counselors, IECs, parents, and students who are looking for general information on degrees awarded, or a very specific combination of academic programs, location, and other institutional characteristics. It uses IPEDS data I downloaded as soon as I can when it became available (and before a looming government shutdown), and shows all 1,700 majors recognized by the federal government in the IPEDS system, using CIP codes, and the number of degrees awarded by college in any selected area. For instance, you might have a question about which college awards the most degrees in French Language and Literature: A few clicks, and you find it's the University of Arizona.  If you want a colder climate, choose the Great Lakes region,

Freshman Migration, 1986 to 2020

(Note: I discovered that in IPEDS, Penn State Main Campus now reports with "The Pennsylvania State University" as one system.  So when you'd look at things over time, Penn State would have data until 2018, and then The Penn....etc would show up in 2020.  I found out Penn State main campus still reports its own data on the website, so I went there, and edited the IPEDS data by hand.  So if you noticed that error, it should be corrected now, but I'm not sure what I'll do in years going forward.) Freshman migration to and from the states is always a favorite visualization of mine, both because I find it a compelling and interesting topic, and because I had a few breakthroughs with calculated variables the first time I tried to do it. If you're a loyal reader, you know what this shows: The number of freshman and their movement between the states.  And if you're a loyal viewer and you use this for your work in your business, please consider supporting the costs