Skip to main content

The College Finder

Note: A few people have commented on slow loading with the visualization.  If you have troubles, click here to be taken right to the visualization.  It should open in a new tab and you can follow along from there.   

This is always a popular post with high school counselors, IECs, parents, and students who are looking for general information on degrees awarded, or a very specific combination of academic programs, location, and other institutional characteristics.

It uses IPEDS data I downloaded as soon as I can when it became available (and before a looming government shutdown), and shows all 1,700 majors recognized by the federal government in the IPEDS system, using CIP codes, and the number of degrees awarded by college in any selected area.

For instance, you might have a question about which college awards the most degrees in French Language and Literature: A few clicks, and you find it's the University of Arizona.  If you want a colder climate, choose the Great Lakes region, for instance, and you'll see it's The University of Michigan.  If you want a private college, another two clicks and you find it's Oberlin.

This takes a lot of time and effort to bring about, and if you use this in your business, you can support hosting, software, and the cost of my time by Buying Me A Coffee (click here). If you're a high school counselor or a student or a parent, please skip the link and go right to the next paragraph.

Here's how you work this visualization.  In the top right, you can choose whether you want to see degrees awarded to all students, men, women, or any federally recognized ethnic or racial group.  You decide; I think it's especially helpful for finding good places for students of color, or women in STEM, for instance.

Along the top, I recommend you choose a family first: Agriculture, or Engineering, or Business, for instance, and then use the degree name to find a specific major.  In the major box, start typing a few letters of the major you're looking for: The more you type, the better.  Typing C-O-M, for instance, will allow you to choose from Communications or Computer Science or Comedy Writing, depending on what family you've selected.  The chart will update.

Along the right, you can limit the type of institutions displayed: By control, by size, by region or state, or a few other variables.  If you ever want to start over, use the controls at lower right.

A lot of the ways I've shared these posts in the past have changed, so you should feel free to share this with anyone you wish.  The more, the merrier.

Let me know if anything looks off with this view.  It's a fresh data set, and although I've spot checked it, there is always a chance something is out of kilter.  

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Educational Attainment and the Presidential Elections

I've been fascinated for a while by the connection between political leanings and education: The correlation is so strong that I once suggested that perhaps Republicans were so anti-education because, in general, places with a higher percentage of bachelor's degree recipients were more likely to vote for Democrats. The 2024 presidential election puzzled a lot of us in higher education, and perhaps these charts will show you why: We work and probably hang around mostly people with college degrees (or higher).  Our perception is limited. With the 2024 election data just out , I thought I'd take a look at the last three elections and see if the pattern I noticed in 2016 and 2020 held.  Spoiler: It did, mostly. Before you dive into this, a couple of tips: Alaska's data is always reported in a funky way, so just ignore it here.  It's a small state (in population, that is) and it's very red.  It doesn't change the overall trends even if I could figure out how to c...
Post a Comment
Read more

First-year student (freshman) migration, 2022

A new approach to freshman migration, which is always a popular post on Higher Ed Data Stories. If you're a regular reader, you can go right to the visualization and start interacting with it.  And I can't stress enough: You need to use the controls and click away to get the most from these visualizations. If you're new, this post focuses on one of the most interesting data elements in IPEDS: The geographic origins of first-year (freshman) students over time.  My data set includes institutions in the 50 states and DC.  It includes four-year public and four-year, private not-for-profits that participate in Title IV programs; and it includes traditional institutions using the Carnegie classification (Doctoral, Masters, Baccalaureate, and Special Focus Schools in business, engineering, and art/design. Data from other institutions is noisy and often unreliable, or (in the case of colleges in Puerto Rico, American Samoa, and other territories, often shows close to 100% of enro...
Post a Comment
Read more

Diversity in the First-year Class at the Ivy Plus Institutions

 I'm not sure where to begin on this one, so let's veer off topic a bit.   I've decided I'll likely be phasing out Higher Ed Data Stories in the near future as I go into retirement and start  my new venture , which is soft launched but not officially open for business.  When I do, I'll be posting regularly on  my blog over there , but won't be putting everything out on the web for free, as I've been doing on this site.  I do appreciate the contributions people made on the Buy Me Coffee site, but the hosting, software, and labor costs never balanced with the revenue, and while there was a lot of good will that came from my work, I was still in a deficit situation (especially on the time part) and I'll need to dedicate that to the business side of things.  Medicare Parts B and D ain't free, you know. But this is some unfinished business, and it might be a good place to end.  You know I've been personally opposed to the very idea of the SAT and ...
Post a Comment
Read more