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Enrollment is complicated, redux

 Enrollment, as I like to say, is complicated.  But that never stopped anyone from asking a question like, "How does enrollment look?"

To help answer, I downloaded IPEDS data of enrollment from 2009 to 2022, breaking it out by full-time and part-time, graduate and undergraduate, and gender, and put it into three different views, below, using the tabs across the top.  As always, you need to be a bit careful jumping to any conclusions about this: There is no easy (or even any hard) way I know of to account for the way Penn State has named and renamed itself over time, and changed the way it reported data, for instance, so anomalies will always show up there. 

But for the most part, this information is very accurate. 

The first view shows summary data.  This is just to get topline information about trends in US higher education enrollments over time.  Choose the type of enrollment at top right, then filter down to the specific categories you'd like to see.  You cannot break anything by interacting.

The second view can be a little messy, but is handy for my admissions and enrollment management colleagues.  It shows market share of every institution in a state; you can only select one state at a time, and the view starts with Washington, where you see UW and WSU dominate.  But what if you want to look at just private colleges? One click will get you there (and the percent of total will recalculate to only that segment).  The same thing applies if you want to look at the enrollment of full-time men at community colleges in Tennessee.  Just click until you get what you need.

The third view started out mostly as fun, but I learned a few things from it, which is always nice. Some examples are in this Twitter thread (which is a series of sequential tweets tied together.)

This blog is mostly a public service to parents, students, and high school counselors, who should always browse to your heart's content and consider it free.  But if you use this in your work, you can support my hosting, computer, and software costs by buying me a coffee at this link.

As always, let me know what you find interesting, compelling, or just hard to believe. 

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