Higher Ed Data Stories

This should be a pretty easy one.  Every year, the College Board puts out data on college tuition and financial aid .  It's a great service, but of course it's all spreadsheets.  Not fun to work with.  But you can interact with the data below. Four views for you to look at: View one is just ranks: Where does your state flagship rank on tuition and fees for residents and non-residents?  Just pick which type of tuition you want to see, then use the highlighter to call out your state's flagship.  On this chart, 50 (at the top) is the highest rate; 1 (at the bottom) is the lowest. View two is a map to see relative values: Here, purple is low, and orange is high.  Choose a year, then choose a value to display: Resident tuition, non-resident tuition; non-resident premium (how much more a non-resident pays), and non-resident percent (that premium as a function of the resident rate.) View three is a single institution over time, showing your choice of inflation-adjusted dollars to

 You know the drill.  For the past few years, I've updated this with new data as soon as IPEDS releases it.  Well, the Fall, 2019 admissions data is out, and I could have written this even before I visualized it. Your yield rate is falling.  Probably. It's falling because a) you tried to look like Harvard, so you thought generating more applications and lowering your admit rate would make you look more like them.  Because you thought that's why people liked Harvard.  Or, you felt bad about yourself, and you wanted to be able to brag to your colleagues. So you spent a lot of money generating more applications.  And you dropped your admit rate. Probably. A bit.  But here's the thing: The number of students going to college in each year is a pretty consistent percentage of the high school graduates, give or take.  And if every graduate applies to one more college, well, they can still only attend one in the end.  Boom.  Your yield rate drops. And so does your draw rate.  T