Higher Ed Data Stories

You hear a lot about enrollment of international students these days, and often, I think, when a subject gets a lot of play, it tends to be overhyped, often by people who don't really understand the data. This would not be one of those times. I used IPEDS trend analysis to look at enrollment of non-resident students (that is, students who are neither US citizens nor permanent residents) over time.  For comparison's sake, I also looked at overall enrollment over that same time. This data set includes all 7,276 post-secondary institutions in the US, both degree-granting and non-degree-granting, whether or not they participate in Title IV programs, so my usual advice about IPEDS data is amplified a bit here.  Still, the trends are interesting. The blue charts (on left) show total enrollment at these institutions: Bars show numbers, and the line shows percent change since Fall, 2004.  The red charts (right) show estimated international enrollment.  It's estimated becaus

The world is shrinking, if not literally, then metaphorically.  Some colleges and universities embrace this in big ways, and this is the purpose of this visualization. The Institute of International Education puts out good data on both international enrollment at US colleges and enrollment of US students in study abroad programs.  I've combined that data into two views that show both. The top chart contains two sort-able and filterable bar charts.  It starts out sorted from large to small on the left column, namely study abroad students in 2014-2015; if you'd rather sort by total international enrollment, hover over that x-axis until the small icon pops up and click that.  Reset by using the button at lower left. The bottom charts shows every college in the data set, with study abroad on the x-axis and international enrollment on the y-axis.  Each dot is a college, color coded by control. As always, if you want to look at a smaller set of colleges, use the filters on th

I normally focus on Higher Education data on this blog, and in fact, this visualization started out as a higher education post: I wanted to look at presidential election results from 2012 to see if education played a part in how people voted.  But since I had a large census file anyway, with lots of interesting information like income, ethnic groups, and other data, I decided to take it one step farther.  OK, may steps farther.  And to me, almost everything is ultimately about education. If you don't like to interact with these visualizations, stop right now.  You'll have to play with this to see how it works. On the top view, you see every county as a dot, color-coded by region, and arranged on a grid.  Hover over any dot for details, if you'd like.  Counties voting more heavily for Obama are on the right; Romney counties are on the left.  Wealthier counties are on top (higher median family income), and poorer are at the bottom.  Note the reference line at $53,046, the