Higher Ed Data Stories

JANUARY 13, 2024

If you believe you can extract strategy from prior activities, I have something for you to try to make sense of here. This is a long compilation of tuition and fees at America's Flagship and Land Grant institutions. If you are not quite sure about the distinction between those two types of institutions, you might want to read this first. TLDR: Land Grants were created by an act of congress, and for this purpose, flagships are whoever I say they are.

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University Institution Schooling 154

Higher Ed Data Stories

DECEMBER 15, 2023

This is always a popular topic, but the subject is misunderstood. I want to talk about discount rate at private colleges. IPEDS has the best data on first-year (or freshman) discount, so that's what I visualize. And the first part of this is going to get a bit into the weeds; if you work in a private college or university, and you use this in your work, or you send it to trustees, you can support my time, effort, software, and hosting costs by buying me a coffee.

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College Department Advise Institution 319

Higher Ed Data Stories

DECEMBER 12, 2023

We finally got the delayed 2022 admissions data from IPEDS yesterday, and I spent the better part of the evening working on pulling this together. Counselors, parents, students, and admissions/enrollment management officers tell me this is a helpful tool to use while thinking about the state of college admission. There are four views here: All institutions interactive shows admission data for all institutions who report it to IPEDS: The number of applications for the first-year class, the number

Institution 276

Institution College Schooling Students 276

Higher Ed Data Stories

OCTOBER 4, 2023

This post is popular every year, and I've just updated it with the most recent NSF data (you can find the link to create your own tables on the visualization if you want.) It shows the undergraduate college of people who received doctorates in 2016, 2018, 2020, and 2022. As you can see from the top-level view, UC Berkeley produces more graduates who go onto a doctorate than any other institution in the US.

Institution 272

Institution Liberal Arts History College 272

Higher Ed Data Stories

SEPTEMBER 25, 2023

This is always a popular post with high school counselors, IECs, parents, and students who are looking for general information on degrees awarded, or very specific combinations 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 awar

Computer Science 353

Computer Science College Degree Engineering 353

Higher Ed Data Stories

JULY 17, 2023

College attainment is a compelling topic for me. Both of my parents had educations that stopped at the 8th grade (although my mother got a GED as an adult), and none of my siblings graduated from college. So I'm keenly aware of the value of a college degree, and the importance of the opportunity to earn a degree. But where opportunity resides, and how that has shifted over time, are both important topics worthy of exploration and discussion.

Education 130

Education Degree College Higher Education 130

Higher Ed Data Stories

APRIL 19, 2023

The College Board has finally put new AP data up on its website after a hiatus of a couple of years. I had previously blogged about their decision to take it down from their website, after some attention that removal had received in the national press , and, unfortunately, some amplification by the right-wing elements who believe that differences in scores by ethnicity are driven by innate biological attributes, rather than things like parental attainment, family income, and opportunity, all of

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Policy College Institution Students 247

Higher Ed Data Stories

MARCH 29, 2023

I don't mean the business of enrollment is complicated (although it is, at times); I mean talking about enrollment is complicated. When I get on the elevator with someone, the question is always, "how is enrollment looking?" Unless everything is wonderful, or everything is awful, there is really no answer to that, because even at one institution, enrollment is made up of several different types of enrollment: New first-year, new transfers, overall graduates, overall undergraduates. returning stu

Community College 130

Community College Institution College Students 130

Higher Ed Data Stories

JANUARY 16, 2023

Last week, we conducted a--well, not a survey, exactly--of high school and independent counselors, asking them what they thought about test-optional and test-free admission policies. This is more a testing of the waters of those interested enough and motivated enough to respond. So, before the fans of tests (who can do their own testing of the water at any time, of course), point this out, file this under "interesting, but not definitive.

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Policy Schooling Students 138

Higher Ed Data Stories

DECEMBER 23, 2022

If you want a definitive answer, you can stop now. As Mark Twain allegedly said, "I was gratified to be able to give an answer right away. I said I didn't know." However, critics of test optional like to trot out this study from 2014 , suggesting test-optional policies do not increase diversity. There are a couple of problems with using that paper to prop up this argument, however: First, the study included about 200 liberal arts colleges, and nowhere does it suggest that the conclusions can be

Policy 362

Policy Liberal Arts Facilities Institution 362

Higher Ed Data Stories

DECEMBER 21, 2022

Fresh IPEDS data dropped this week, and my evenings have been busy downloading, cleaning, and structuring the data. Since it's the holiday season, I won't even complain that IPEDS could make this all easy for anyone who wants to get the data, but then I suppose I'd have to shut down the blog. This is pretty easy, I think: Answer almost any important enrollment question you might have about the last eleven years (as long as you don't want information about even-numbered years, of course).

Institution 130

Institution Students 130

Higher Ed Data Stories

DECEMBER 14, 2022

This is a popular post with anyone who works with high school students, and I've just updated it with fresh data from 2021 graduates; it's mainly helpful for two types of cases: Students who are looking for very uncommon majors Students who want to see which colleges have the largest departments in their specific major This is pretty straightforward, and I've put the instructions in tool tips; just hover over the icons in the shape of an I you'll see on the visualization.

Engineering 204

Engineering Degree Department Schooling 204

Higher Ed Data Stories

DECEMBER 9, 2022

This is a refresh of a popular post I've done a few times, asking the important question in the title. People tend to think of graduation rates as an output of the institution, and of course, in some sense, they are; they are certainly measured that way. But what if I told you that a college's six-year graduation rate (and, to a lesser extent, its four-year graduation rate) can be easily predicted by a single variable that we know before a student ever sets foot on campus?

Engineering 259

Engineering Institution Schooling College 259

Higher Ed Data Stories

OCTOBER 28, 2022

Discount rate is a hot topic among private college leaders, and although it's an interesting measure, it's not as helpful as some people might think it is. And it's a little hard to grasp and hard to explain. But I'm going to try. Discount rate can be helpful when measuring yourself against yourself over time; and it can be helpful when measuring yourself against similar peers.

College 253

College Scholarship Model Institution 253

Higher Ed Data Stories

OCTOBER 26, 2022

I've been creating this data visualization, or some form of it, for several years now. I think it's most useful for higher education enrollment professionals who have to explain to people at their university why their yield rate is falling. The short answer is that applications and admits are increasing faster than student populations: If a student today applies to an average of seven colleges, compared to four colleges twenty years ago, yield rate almost has to go down.

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Higher Education Institution College Schooling 268

Higher Ed Data Stories

SEPTEMBER 30, 2021

(Note: I discovered that in IPEDS, Penn State Main Campus now reports with "The Pennsylvania State University" as one system. So when you'd look at things over time, Penn State would have data until 2018, and then The Penn.etc would show up in 2020. I found out Penn State main campus still reports its own data on the website, so I went there, and edited the IPEDS data by hand.

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College Schooling Students University 138

Higher Ed Data Stories

OCTOBER 14, 2021

This week our trade publication, The Chronicle of Higher Education took a quick look at changes in enrollment between Fall, 2019, and Fall, 2020. If you don't work in higher ed, you can read a few stories per month for free with a registration. If you do, there is no reason you shouldn't be a subscriber. Something happened in the spring of 2019 that might have had a big effect on college enrollment.

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Community College Institution Higher Education College 130

Higher Ed Data Stories

OCTOBER 21, 2021

Each year, NACUBO comes out with its discount study. If you're not a member, you get a nice press release and some pdfs. Even if you are a member, you only get a chance to buy the study. And that's enough for most people. But not for the readers of Higher Ed Data Stories, I've found. Let's talk about discount for a minute. Different colleges talk about it differently, and even with this IPEDS data, it's impossible to be precise.

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College Scholarship Model Guidance 130

Higher Ed Data Stories

OCTOBER 27, 2021

Every year, The College Board releases summaries of the prior year's AP program. While I've visualized these before ( here and here ), I've been unwilling to update the visualizations or do longitudinal analysis, for a couple of reasons: First, the data are in multiple tables in multiple spreadsheets, and they are so heavily formatted for printing that scraping the data out of them is quite a burden.

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Schooling Higher Education College Students 130

Higher Ed Data Stories

NOVEMBER 10, 2021

I've often said that the visualization on educational attainment in the US was perhaps the first visualization I did that blew my mind. I thought it was a problem with the data. And, frankly, I'm possibly more amazed that more people aren't amazed. I've done a few posts on this topic, and it never seems to get much traction. So I'll give it another shot this time.

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Education Degree College Schooling 130

Higher Ed Data Stories

NOVEMBER 12, 2021

A lot has been made of graduation rates at America's colleges and universities. Some point to what they see as rates that are too low, while others think that high graduation rates are a testament to something happening inside the college. And I, of course, think graduation rates are mostly inputs, rather than outputs. If your admissions process simply takes the most capable children of wealthy, college-educated parents, it's almost a certainty your graduation rates will be higher.

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College Students Schooling Institution 130

Higher Ed Data Stories

NOVEMBER 18, 2021

I've posted this visualization a few times, but never embedded it in a blog post. Now's the time. Teresa Watanabe of the LA Times tweeted this today. So, for the foreseeable future, no one will need an ACT or SAT to gain admission to the UC or Cal State system campuses. And in fact, testing won't help you get in, either. For lots of students, there will be no need to test.

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Schooling College Institution Students 130

Higher Ed Data Stories

NOVEMBER 26, 2021

You know I love this data set of freshman migration patterns over time. It shows every college in two year increments, and contains the state-by-state makeup of the freshman class. I like it for a couple of reasons: First, it's interesting in its own right to see where colleges attract students from. I think students can use it too, to see how geographically diverse the colleges they're looking at really are.

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Policy Schooling College Institution 130

Higher Ed Data Stories

NOVEMBER 28, 2021

First, a quiz: What do these states have in common? (Hint: Regular readers of this blog will already know the answer. And you will too, shortly.) The prompt for this post is generated by friend and colleague Akil Bello, who, apparently while watching college football the weekend after thanksgiving, tweeted this question : The answer is multi-faceted and complex, and likely varies a lot between the states.

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Degree History Humanities Institution 130

Higher Ed Data Stories

JANUARY 6, 2022

I started doing this post on a regular basis several years ago, in response (if I recall) to a colleague talking about their Board of Trustees Chair insisting that "all we need to do" to bring enrollment back to its former level is to get the yield rate up. That's the equivalent of saying all you need to do is straighten your drives and cut ten putts from each round, and you'll be a great golfer.

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College Institution Students University 100

Higher Ed Data Stories

JANUARY 27, 2022

If you're alive today, you have lived your whole life with college rankings. Yes, even you. You may not have knows you were living in the time of college rankings, but indeed, you have been, unless you were born before 1911 (or maybe earlier.) If you're interested, you can read this Twitter thread from 2020 where I discuss them and include snippets of those 1911 rankings as well as those from 1957, written by Chesley Manly.

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College Schooling Institution Students 100

Higher Ed Data Stories

JANUARY 31, 2022

I bet you've heard about the enrollment crisis in American colleges and universities, and I bet you think that men are avoiding college in droves, even if you work at a college and see lots of men on campus. And you wonder, "How can this be?" Well, it's not exactly the crisis the media are making it out to be. Here are some views to help you see that.

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College Schooling Institution Students 100

Higher Ed Data Stories

FEBRUARY 20, 2022

OK, I got your attention. That title is admittedly a bit harsh. But before I talk about the data, there are lots of caveats here, and some background will help. Last week, NACUBO released its 2021 Study of Endowments, along with lots of data for the public, and more if you are a member. I used the free data here. The last person you want to get angry at you is the business officers.

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Scholarship Higher Education Institution College 100

Higher Ed Data Stories

MARCH 22, 2022

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.

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Institution College Schooling University 130

Higher Ed Data Stories

MARCH 31, 2022

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.

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Higher Education Education Community College College 130

Higher Ed Data Stories

APRIL 7, 2022

Yes, it may be that your enrollment is falling. Or, it may be rising. That could be bad, or it could be good. But if you do enrollment management for a living, and you talk to your trustees or alumni or anyone else who's interested, you might be interested in another metric that is perhaps more telling: Market share. As I've written many times, there are factors outside of our control that influence how many students enroll in our institutions: Demographics, the economy, your appearance in the F

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Environment Institution Schooling College 130

Higher Ed Data Stories

MAY 7, 2022

Much has been made recently of changes in enrollment in US Higher Ed: Fewer males ( is it a crisis or not? ). Shrinking enrollments. Changes in admissions due to test optional and COVID. In this recent piece in the Chronicle of Higher Education , I recently pointed out that one of the ways colleges stayed viable during previous enrollment shifts was to expand both physical campus locations and offerings and degree programs tailored to working adults.

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Adult Education Degree Higher Education College 130

Higher Ed Data Stories

MAY 14, 2022

The world of college admission--or at least the discussion of it--is too often focused on freshman admission, and then, too often focused on freshman admission at the highly rejective colleges (h/t to Akil Bello ). People tend to think most students apply to a college at age 17 or 18, spend four years at that one institution, and then graduate. But just like the Kardashians aren't reflective of the typical American family even though they get a lot of press, neither is that little sliver of coll

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Degree Institution Community College College 130

Higher Ed Data Stories

MAY 27, 2022

It's been a while since I wrote about diversity using Simpson's Diversity Index, which is an ecologist's way of looking at diversity of a population. Essentially, Simpson's gives us a number that helps us answer this question: If two members of a population are randomly selected, what is the probability that they will be from different groups? The formula for Simpson's creates a value between 0 and 1.

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Institution College Higher Education Students 130

Higher Ed Data Stories

JUNE 23, 2022

I'm on vacation this week, and didn't plan to do anything on the blogs unless something really pressing came up. Something really pressing came up. It borders on scandalous. By now, you've probably heard that a certain university successfully trademarked the word "The." How this happens, I have no idea; I'm not a lawyer (and that sound you hear is all the lawyers saying, "no kidding.

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College University 130

Higher Ed Data Stories

JUNE 28, 2022

The recent SCOTUS ruling overturning Roe v. Wade has set off an interesting debate about student college choice. People who favor legal access to abortion seem convinced that students--especially women--will change their college plans based on the climate in the state of the college(s) they're considering. Will it? I don't know. I do know that when everyone seems to be convinced of something related to college admissions and student choice, the reality is often very different than the prediction

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Policy College Students Institution 180

Higher Ed Data Stories

JULY 7, 2022

Each time I publish this visualization I get a lot of traffic on the site, and I can see why. It shows all doctoral recipients (in 2016-2020) broken out by where they received their bachelor's degrees. So, for instance, the top level view shows that UC Berkeley is the alma mater of more doctoral recipients than any other institution, followed by The University of Michigan and Cornell University.

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Degree Institution Humanities Schooling 130