Higher Ed Data Stories

I'm going to recommend you read this one closely before you dive into the visualization, as there is a lot of context necessary to understand it.  It's mostly driven by the different ways the US Government counts its own citizens compared to the ways in which the US Government requires colleges to count its students. As you probably know, when a student applies for admission (or any time after they enroll), they have the option of indicating race or ethnicity.  If a student indicates Hispanic origin, regardless of their race, they're counted as Hispanic.  If not, students can indicate a race or ethnicity (Asian, Native American, etc.). In the census, "Hispanic" is not considered a race or ethnicity, but an origin.  People who indicate they are of Hispanic origin are still asked to indicate a race on the census form. Thus, when you want to compare the diversity of education to the diversity of the population, you're faced with comparing apples to oranges.  And

I often wonder if we'd have an application fee if we were creating the admissions process from scratch today.  But we do, and there are actually some good reasons for doing so, not the least of which is that it costs a lot of money to process and manage applications. Some people have wondered aloud whether app fees are simply a money-making enterprise for colleges, and the answer is yes, no, and sort of.  We can't think of universities as charities, and the people doing the work of admissions have to get paid; conceptually, it makes sense to charge a fee to applicants, since some substantial percentage of them will never pay tuition on your campus. But it's too easy and incorrect to multiply applications by the app fee and assume that money flows into the admissions office.  Even at those universities where the streams are directed to admissions rather than into a general fund, some substantial percentage of students get a fee waiver.  And, as you'll see, about half of