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Showing posts from October, 2014

College and University Enrollment in 2021

The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) provides a lot of snapshot reports of national education data, but it also produces projections of educational statistics out ten years that can prove useful.  Unfortunately, they're always a couple years behind the curve, so this is from the 2012 report (the 2013 report is out, but only available in pdf format.) It tells an interesting story of college enrollment that can be helpful as we look into the future.  By 2021, overall enrollment will increase with the US population; it will still be mostly Caucasian students, although that majority will have shrunk; and Hispanics will have overtaken African-Americans as the second largest ethnic group. If your institution isn't thinking about the future, and especially if your administration is still dominated by people who went to college in the 1960's and 1970's, you should show them this. Is this a case of everything changing?  Or everything staying the same?  Le...

Educational Attainment by Race and Gender

This is a great example of how Data Visualization helps tell a story. First, take a look at this table of data and tell me what you see.  I know, right?  Not much stands out of a table of black numbers on a white canvas. Now look below.  It's pretty much the same data (I did not display SME), but it shows you a pattern you see instantly.  This is the percent of people by age who are enrolled in any school, from pre-school to graduate programs.  On the first view, you see the pattern by age group; each line is a gender/ethnic group (white females, Hispanic males, etc.)  Right away, the story jumps out at you.  In very early years, white students are enrolled at greater rates.  From ages 6-15, things even out, then they split again. (Causality, coincidence, or co-variance with data you don't see?) The view starts with 1995, but use the slider in the top right corner to scroll through the years.  When you do, you'll see the consistency ov...

Where do International Students Enroll in the US?

Here's some more interesting information from the IIE Open Doors Project, but this is not about where US students study overseas, but where students from overseas enroll in the US.  This is pretty simple, actually. Each dot on the map represents a college or university (hover over for details).  The size of the dot represents the International Student population in 2012, and the color represents the percentage of enrollment at that college or university that is international (that is, on a J-1 or F-1 Visa, presumably; permanent residents are not considered international students.)  The bar charts below show every IHE with both the number of international students (right column) and percentage of all enrollment that is international (on the left.) You can use the filters to narrow down the IHEs displayed, by choosing the number of international students, the percent international, or the percent of all enrollment that is international.  And you can sort the bar ch...

Students Studying Abroad from American Universities

Lots of US college students study abroad, and the IIE Open Doors Project has great data about where they go; if you're a member, they graciously make even more detailed data about what colleges and universities they attend. So I took that data and rolled it (from 2012) into my IPEDS data set (from 2013) to see what jumped out at me.  On this visualization, you can sort the top chart several ways to see who comes to the top of the list: Alphabetically, by the number of students studying abroad, by the percent of all enrollment or the percent of undergraduate enrollment.  Just hover over the top of that column until the small icon pops up, and click on it.  It will sort ascending, descending, and alphabetically with subsequent clicks. Note, I've taken a few institutions out because they are mostly graduate and thus have undergrad/study abroad percentages off the charts. The bottom chart is more interesting, I think, for the pattern it shows: For public institutions, a...

Changes in Degrees Awarded Over Time

As we continue the push to enroll and graduate more students from colleges, it's interesting to look back at trends in degrees awarded, at the Bachelor's, Master's, and Doctoral levels over time.  So, I downloaded data from the Digest of Education Statistics and came up with this. At the very top level, we see that the number of degrees awarded has increased dramatically since 1970, although of course so has the population: It's up about 51% since 1970, while degrees awarded increased 138%, while bachelor's degrees increased just 113%.  You can't say after looking at those statistics, however, whether we've been successful or not; along with the increase in population comes shifts in age distributions, as well as ethnicity and wealth, all of which affect the likelihood of going to college. Still, the interesting stuff comes as you scroll across the gray boxes on the top, and drill down by academic discipline: Decreases in English and Education, and incr...