What This Blog is About

Almost all cultures have a tradition of telling stories. I've long believed data can make stories richer and can provide more insight into the things we live out each day. And I think the stories I can tell that most need telling are about Higher Education in the United States.

In college, my favorite class was called "Belief and Unbelief in History." It was one of those classes that most students hate: No "right" answers, no being able to memorize the content for the exams. In fact, there was no syllabus: On the first day of class, Professor Richard Resch said, "This class is about the stories of the stories that people tell to explain their belief in the divine." There was a mid-term, but it didn't count. There was only one test, the final, and on it, one question, which he announced: Tell the story of the stories.

I've noticed for a while that there is a story of the stories that data reveals. And I hope you'll notice it too, but there is no right or wrong answer, and mercifully, no midterm. No final. You can Google me to contact me; as far as I know, I'm the only person in the world with this name, so it shouldn't be hard. I hope you'll let me know what you think, or offer suggestions for posts.

Stories are on the "Higher Ed Data Stories" link above.

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...

Changes in AP Scores, 2022 to 2024

Used to be, with a little work, you could download very detailed data on AP results from the College Board website: For every state, and for every course, you could see performance by ethnicity. And, if you wanted to dig really deep, you could break out details by private and public schools, and by grade level. I used to publish the data every couple of years. Those days are gone. The transparency The College Board touts as a value seems to have its limits, and I understand this to some extent: Racists loved to twist the data using single-factor analysis, and that's not good for a company who is trying to make business inroads with under-represented communities as they cloak their pursuit of revenue as an altruistic push toward access. They still publish data, but as I wrote about in my last post , it's far less detailed; what's more, what is easily accessible is fairly sterile, and what's more detailed seems to be structured in a way that suggests the company doesn...

The Highly Rejective Colleges

If you're not following Akil Bello on Twitter, you should be. His timeline is filled with great insights about standardized testing, and he takes great effort to point out racism (both subtle and not-so-subtle) in higher education, all while throwing in references to the Knicks and his daughter Enid, making the experience interesting, compelling, and sometimes, fun. Recently, he created the term " highly rejective colleges " as a more apt description for what are otherwise called "highly selective colleges." As I've said before, a college that admits 15% of applicants really has a rejections office, not an admissions office. The term appears to have taken off on Twitter, and I hope it will stick. So I took a look at the highly rejectives (really, that's all I'm going to call them from now on) and found some interesting patterns in the data. Take a look: The 1,132 four-year, private colleges and universities with admissions data in IPEDS are incl...

Higher Ed Data Stories

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