Higher Ed Data Stories

Graduation rates are always a hot topic in higher education, but often for the wrong reason.  To demonstrate, I offer my parents.  Here is a portrait of Agnes and Mark, married May 4, 1946. One night while I was talking to my brother, he asked, "Do you think mom was the way she was because dad was the way he was, or do you think dad was the way he was because mom was the way she was?"  To which I replied, "yes."  My point, of course, is that in complex relationships, it's always difficult--impossible, actually--to detangle cause and effect. And, despite the Student Affairs perspective that graduation rates are a treatment effect, I maintain that they are actually a selection effect.  As I've written about before , it's pretty easy to predict a college's six-year graduation rate if you know one data point: The mean SAT score of the incoming class.  That's because the SAT rolls a lot of predictive factors into one index number.  These include acade

Good news: We have new IPEDS data on average net cost.  Bad news: Because IPEDS is IPEDS, it's data from the 2021-22 Academic Year.  This is pretty straightforward: Each dot represents a public institution, colored by region, showing the average net price for first-year students entering in that year.  IPEDS breaks out average net price by income bands, so you can see what a family with income of $30,000 to $48,000 pays, for instance, by using the filters at right. You can also limit the institutions displayed by using the top three filters: Doctoral institutions in the Far West, or in Illinois, for instance.  If you want to see a specific institution highlighted, use that control.  Just type part of the name of the institution, like this example, and make your selection:  Average net price shows The Total Cost of Attendance (COA), which includes tuition, room, board, books, transportation, and personal expenses, minus all grant aid.  It does not include loans, but of course, loans

I've always been fascinated by the idea of "colleges."  We think we know what we mean when we say it, but do we really? When some people say "college" they might mean any four-year college that enrolls undergraduates.  Others might mean everything except for-profit colleges.  Do you include community colleges in your group?  Some people do, and others don't. And of course, I'd be remiss if I didn't point out that when some major news outlets talk about "college" they are really talking about the 15 or  50 institutions their readers or listeners fascinate over. Well, now you can see the answer.  Sort of.  I started with IPEDS data, which includes all post-secondary institutions that receive Title IV aid.  There are many institutions in the US that don't and although they can report to IPEDS, they are not required to, and many don't. But if we start with all the IPEDS institutions that enrolled at least one student in 2022, you get 5,