Higher Ed Data Stories

In 2015, I wrote this post on falling yield rates.  It was pretty obvious to many of us in the profession that this trend was widespread, and largely driven by a dramatic increase in applications against a more modest increase in actual students who could or would enroll. It apparently wasn't so obvious to everyone.  Response was much stronger than I thought it would be, and I never had seen so many requests from people who wanted to share it with their trustees (btw, this is public; you never have to ask permission to share). So I redid it, using trend data from 2005 to 2018.  First a couple of definitions: Admit rate is the percentage of applicants who were offered admission (admits/applicants). Yield rate is the percentage of admitted students who enroll (enrollers/admits). Draw rate is not commonly known, and I wish I remember who first mentioned it to me in the 1980's.  It stuck with me and is a valuable metric, I think, as we attempt to measure ...

It's always good to get some perspective. And thus, every so often, I download fresh data and do this visualization, with a few variations on a theme. We love to focus our collective attention and wonder on a handful of high profile, well known, well resourced, and highly selective institutions. Is that amount of attention warranted? You decide. This shows just under 2,400 four-year public and private, not-for-profit institutions. I've broken these institutions into selectivity bands, based on 2018 freshman admissions data. You can see how many there are, how many students they enroll, how much of endowment they collectively control, and and what their average endowments are on the first tab. The second tab looks at variables by percentage of totals: Thus, not how much, but what percentage? Be sure to read the Data Notes tab for a few minor caveats. This is not precise, but the patterns would hold for the most part. Of course, you can also see what percentage of co...

Freshman Migration--or patterns of enrollment by new students, has always been of interest to me.  So I'm always thrilled when IPEDS releases new data, and the 2018 stuff is out.  This time, I decided to download every bit of it that's available, and give users the option to take a longer view, if they want. Some caveats: IPEDS only requires this data in even-numbered years, so that's what I downloaded.  Still, there are some colleges that did not report for some years; don't write to let me know about it, as I've included it if they did.  Second, there are always a few mistakes in the data.  One year I found that Harvard reported 237 freshmen from Arkansas when they meant California. It happens. Anyway, four views here, using the tabs across the top: Freshman Migration Patterns shows data over time: What number and percentage of students went to college in-state, in-region, or out-of-region.  Use the filter at top right to choose one state.  Th...