Where Students in the US were enrolled, 2012

A while ago, I wrote about the wide range of institutions in the US post-secondary education system. The point I was trying to make was that the prestigious, extraordinarily selective institutions you hear about all the time represent just the top of iceberg when it comes to colleges and universities in the US.

That visualization counted institutions, for the most part.

But another way to look at this is to show where students enroll, and I think this can be equally surprising, and, I hope a bit enlightening. So take a look at this, again using Tableau Story Boards. Each gray tab across the top shows the data presented in a different way; keep clicking from left to right to see the interesting tidbits this data reveals to us.

Did you know, for instance, that one out of every eleven undergraduate college students in the US (excluding for-profits) enrolls at a California Community College? Or that there are no private, not-for-profit colleges in Wyoming? Or that the state with the highest percentage of students enrolled in four-year public universities is...well, you'll have to find that for yourself.

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Where College and University Students Enroll in America, 2012

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