College ScoreCard Earning by Major - Traditional 4-Year Colleges; Bachelor Degree

Data used in the project is derived from the DataMaster IPEDS project. Details of the project can be found at: Youtube.com and Tableau Public

As outlined in my previous article: College ScoreCard Earning by Major - 4-Year Public Bachelor, the newest College ScoreCard data has published the median salary for college graduates by majors, first year after graduate from college. In my previous article, I have concentrated on the public 4-year colleges. For this article, I have included the private not-for-profit 4-year colleges. This includes the elite private colleges like Harvard, MIT, ... etc.

As with previous article, in addition to the interactive tools provided, the author has prepared few static charts at the end of the article that facilitate the comparison between various majors/fields-of-study.

Below is the histogram chart for salary. The chart can be used to see the overall picture of the data provided by the college scorecard data. By setting both dropdowns to (All), the chart shows overall salary range for programs listed in the college scorecard dataset. Most program prepared graduates to earn a median wage of about $27,000 a year. In comparison, there are few programs that their graduates were paid above $90,000 a year. The was one program that was paid $141,000 a year and which is the highest. There were also few programs that the graduates earned only $3,000 a year.

By selecting a 2-digits CIP code, say 52 - Business, you can see that, for business major, the highest paid earned is about $105,000 while most of the program earned their graduates at $39,000 a year. Divining in by selecting a 4-digits CIP code, say 52.03, you can see that most accounting program earned their graduates at $42,000 a year while one program earned its graduate $81,000 a year.

Figure 1, Histogram Chart for Salary

If you were looking at the Figure 1 and were wondering who were those schools that provided high salary earning, you can use the Figure 2 below to find out.

For example, if you like to know which program/Inst. prepared its students for the most earning, keep the first two dropdown at (All), and select the highest earning category in the third dropdown, which will be $153,000. The program shows up is the computer program CIP 11.01 at California Institution of Technology. For particular field, you can select a 2-digits CIP first, and while leaving the 4-digits CIP code at (All), you can use the salary bin dropdown to select the salary. Once you did that, you will see a list of schools that fall inside that salary range along with the 4-digits CIP and the salary. Of cause, if you have decided on the 4-digits CIP major, you can go straight to the 4-digits CIP.

Have fun and enjoy!

Figure 2, the List of Institutions

Hope you are having fun so far.

There are many use of the above tools. If you are a high school graduates or parents and are looking for a suitable school, you can use the tool get some insights of you school. If you already have schools in your mind, these tools can give you a sense of where those school stand in terms of earning. But! Earning isn't everything. Otherwise, everyone would just aimed for the highest paid school/program. Remember that, everyone is different. It is really a matter of did you do your best? Schools too! These tools are telling schools to do their best and let students to vote with their feet.

The following charts are trying to provide some comparison information between fields/majors. It is not to sway your decision but to provide big pictures as in the openness and transparency of the need of a democratic system. Open and transparency does not mean free but a concept that people deserve the equal rights to access the information. For more on that topic, look at DemoMatters.org

Let's begin with the chart for STEM fields. STEM was put forward in the wake of worrying US falling behind in the world (economic) competition. Personally, however, I would like to view it as a movement to drive people to do their best! Many people are capable of knowing/learning more of STEM. The STEM is not going to push out other trainings/majors. But on the other hand, if people are avoiding STEM to avoid generous learning and studying, maybe this is a thing that can make a difference.

As shown in the chart, not all STEM fields are the same and, yes, they are not! These days, a lot of things are considered STEM and it really lost the focus from many point of views. From the salary's point of view, we should understand that it simply reflect the labor market's supplies and demands. Because not many students are finishing the engineering degrees (for one reason or the others), there are shortages for engineers. Also, because there isn't 'critical' needs for physicists and, therefore, their salary weren't high. Physicists may know a lot about how things works and could be a better technician or engineer. But, people can care less if you know the thing. If all it take is to follow procedure to fix things, so be it. So, don't feel bad. It is just the market value, it does not measure what you are. On the other hand, if you can but you don't, then that is a different matter.

From Figure 3, we can easily see that, in general, engineers got paid well followed by one branch of the health field along with 'information service' and 'engineering technician'. One interesting observed is that the health fields actually broken into two humps - the higher humps are pretty much correspond to the registered nurses and the other hump are much of administrative, nutrition and other services. Looking at other components in the STEM designation, they aren't doing as well. Other components leaded by the mathematician, then the 'physicist chemists' and followed by the social scientist, the second branch of the health field and, then, the biologist.

Figure 3, summary for STEM fields

Liberal Arts and Humanities graduates are constantly been considered the opposites to the STEM graduates. However, as to the first year salary, most liberal arts were paid compatibly to physicist and chemist.

Figure 4, Humanities and Liberal Arts

Besides the STEM and Liberal Arts fields, there are few fields that are well established and worth to take a look at. These are the business, the education, the visual/performance arts, and the agricultural related fields. Comparing to STEM fields, the business graduates got paid relatively well comparable to that of mathematician. The education graduates got paid comparable to that of physicist, followed slightly by the agricultural graduates. Compare to all fields we have discussed, the visual/performance artist probably paid the least, where the peak located.

Figure 5, Some major fields

Figure 6 shows some other fields that have relatively more data (i.e. more inst. provided the training). Within those, Architects doing relatively well.

Figure 6 and 7, fields with relatively more data

The rest of fields are shown in Figure 8 and 9. The number of data points presented in the ScoreCard are low - may just because few students are in those fields and the US Education department can have enough data to insure the data is statistically sound.

Figure 8 and 9, fields with relatively less data

College ScoreCard Earning by Major - 4-Year Public Bachelor

Data used in the project is derived from the DataMaster IPEDS project. Details of the project can be found at: Youtube.com and Tableau Public

Higher education have been touted by many as the ticket to prosperity, especially the higher education industry. But for many years, the industry was not able to provide measurable evidence of the benefit provided by specific higher education institutions. On the surface, people heard of stories and believes elite schools are 'likely' to provide more benefits.

The US Department of Education were on the mission in trying to provide American parents and students measures the were intended to help families in choosing schools that provided good values for their investment in the higher education. The College Score Card data is exactly aimed at that goal.

In the past, the College Score Card, has published salary data by schools. Unfortunately, the data would not distinguish the values of different field of studies. Since institionss have very different mixes of colleges, or field of studies, the published salary data were likely to reflex the composition of the institution instead of the value of the institution.

This year (2019), the November 20's update to the Score Card data, for the first time, were able to provide salary data by the field of studies, granted only the salary earned one year after graduated from college.

While the data is very useful, the web tool provided is a bit difficult for consumer to see the big picture. It is the goal of this article to provide user a different way of using the data.

For beginner, the Field of Study is classified by what we called the CIP code. The CIP code is used to classify degree programs into various categories. There are many CIP codes and, therefore, the categories. Each detailed category were given a 6-digits CIP code. Similar categories are then grouped together and are given a 4-digits CIP code. For now, the published salary data is at the 4-digits code level.

There are several way of using the tools provided below. To see the big picture, we can begin with Figure 1 by selecting the (All) for both the 2-digits and 4-digits CIP codes. This will show the overall salary data provided by ScoreCard dataset. For the histogram, you and see that of all the program data provided by the ScoreCard, there are 1,711 program that will earn their graduates about $27,000 for the first year after graduation. At the high-end, you can see that there are 4 programs that will earn their graduates about $114,000 for the first year.

Once we see the over all picture, we can dive into each of the 2-digits CIP code branches. Let's leave the 4-digits CIP with the (All) selection and just select the 2-digits CIP code one by one. This will allow us to get a general sense of the market value of each discipline.

In the case that if you were looking at a particular school, you can obtained the salary of your school from College Score Card's web site and put it in the context of the Figure 1.

One drawback of the Figure 1 is that it is hard to compare various 2-digits CIPs in order to come up with some extractions. To facilitate that, the author has provide some general observation at the end of the article beginning with Figure 3 below.

Figure 1, the Salary Range

If you were looking at the Figure 1 and were wondering who were those schools that provided high salary earning, you can use the Figure 2 below to find out.

First, you select the 2-digits CIP, and then the 4-digits CIP. You can then use the salary bin dropdown to select the salary. Once you did that, you will see a list of schools that fall inside that salary range.

Figure 2, the List of Institutions

As we all know that STEM is a heated topics in many economic development and higher education discussions. From the salary point of view, the suspicion is that STEM graduates get paid well. However, if we look at Figure 3 carefully, we understand that there are a lot of myth surrounding that perception.

First of all, the original idea of STEM is to identify field, knowledge, or trainings that are essential for the US to stay competitive in the knowledge centered global economics. This idea does not necessarily meet by the real world economics of supply and demands. The other problem of the STEM is the designation of fields. These days, almost any field that can remotely tied to the original idea were given the STEM tag by various 'researchers'. In figure 3, we do take the liberal route that included many 'STEM' fields. Of cause, our purpose is simply to show salaries comparison.

From Figure 3, we can easily see that, in general, engineers got paid well followed by one branch of the health field along with 'information service' and 'engineering technician'. One interesting observed is that the health fields actually broken into two humps - the higher humps are pretty much correspond to the registered nurses and the other hump are much of administrative, nutrition and other services. Looking at other components in the STEM designation, they aren't doing as well. Other components leaded by the mathematician, then the 'physicist chemists' and followed by the social scientist, the second branch of the health field and, then, the biologist.

Figure 3, summary for STEM fields

Liberal Arts and Humanities graduates are constantly been considered the opposites to the STEM graduates. However, as to the first year salary, most liberal arts were paid compatibly to physicist and chemist.

Figure 4, Humanities and Liberal Arts

Besides the STEM and Liberal Arts fields, there are few fields that are well established and worth to take a look at. These are the business, the education, the visual/performance arts, and the agricultural related fields. Comparing to STEM fields, the business graduates got paid relatively well comparable to that of mathematician. The education graduates got paid comparable to that of physicist, followed slightly by the agricultural graduates. Compare to all fields we have discussed, the visual/performance artist probably paid the least, where the peak located.

Figure 5, Some major fields

Figure 6 shows some other fields that have relatively more data (i.e. more inst. provided the training). Within those, Architects doing relatively well.

Figure 6, fields with relatively more data

The rest of fields are shown in Figure 7 and 8. The number of data points presented in the ScoreCard are low - may just because few students are in those fields and the US Education department can have enough data to insure the data is statistically sound.

Figure 7 and 8, fields with relatively less data

=================

Find Where Students Went To Colleges? IPEDS Migration Enrollment

As a state higher education stakeholder, it will be interesting to know where your college going students went for colleges. Knowing that information can help making policies to either keep students in the state or make the best usage of state resources. The National IPEDS (Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System) survey provided you exactly these information.

For beginner, let's understand how those data were collected. Basically, the IPEDS survey will asked each college/institution to provide information about which State their first-time degree seeking students come from. At the same time, they also asked colleges to separate those students into two groups: One for those graduated from higher school within one year of college attendance and the other for those high school students that waited longer than one year after graduating before enrolled in a college.

By building a data system that hosting these data at the national level, it is possible to see, for a given State, where their college going students went for colleges. Info on a system that provids the data for this article/application and is built to handle IPEDS data at the national level can be found at 'the IT tidbit blog'
with related tutorial/demonstration video posted at: Youtube.com.

This article/application will provide you the knowledge and tools on how to find the migration information at the state level. For detailed information down to the college/institution level, please see the following youtube videos:
College data(Enrollment) States your students come from -IPEDS migration and
IPEDS Nebraska Enrollment Migration College Data
The first video exams which states Nebraska's college students came from and to which institution these students went. The second video shows to which state or institution Nebraska's students went.

For this article, the application is hosted at the Tableau Public and is concerned about state level analysis only. Let's begin with the out-migration first. The out-migration provides reader/user the information about where your college going students went for colleges. Fig. 1 displays exactly that information for students just graduated from high school that attend colleges within 12 months of their graduation.

Figure 1 - Out Migration

In Fig. 1, if you select public 4 year institution as the sector (Pblc4Yr) and select Nebraska (NE) as the 'From state', you can see Nebraska is sending 279 students to the neighboring state of Kansas (KS).

To get an overall picture, Fig. 2 below provides a way to see the percentage of college goers that are attending the in-state colleges.

Figure 2 - % College Goers Attend In-State Colleges

By setting the sector to public-2-year (Pblc2Yr) in Fig. 2, we can observe that for most States, the in-state attendance is around 100% and which is understandable since community colleges were intended to serve local communities. Few exceptions do exist: AK (Alaska), DC (District of Columbia, and DE (Delaware). For Alaska, there is a single public 2 year college: Ilisagvik College. For DC and DE, there is none.

Next, let's exam the number of students that migrated/moved to a particular State. This can be done with the Fig. 3

Figure 3 - In Migration

In the case of Fig. 3, if we set the sector to public 4 year(Pblc4Yr) and the 'To state' to IA (Iowa), we notice that there are 2,731 students that left Illinois (IL) and enrolled in Iowa (IA) colleges/institutions.

The next question the readers may have might be... So.. In the Net, if Nebraska lose or gain students from, say, Iowa (IA)? This is exactly what the Fig. 4 can show you.

Figure 4 - Net In-Migration

As shown with Fig. 4, Nebraska (NE), in the case of public 4 year (Pblc4Yr), actually gain 137 students from Iowa (IA).

All of the cases about, we are concentrated on students that attend colleges within one year of them graduated from the high schools. Part of the reason is that these are the majority of the students and, also, these are what policy maker may have more influences on.

The next question you might wondering is: if a state do intend to retain all of their college goers, do the state has enough 'space/enrollment-spot' to host all their college goers. There might be other ways to address this question. However, with the data at hand, we intended to answer this question with the Table 1 below.

Table 1 - Serve In-State Needs

In Table 1, we listed few columns. The second, and the third columns listed college goers that went to in-state, and out-state colleges, while the fourth column provide the total college goers. The fifth column provides the total number of students enrolled in all colleges in the given State, regardless if those students are coming from in-state or out-of-state. We use this column as a measure of the state's enrollment capacity, i.e. the number of students a state's colleges can enroll. By taking the ratio between the college goer and the state capacity, we can see if a state can absorb all its college goers.

By setting the sector in Table 1 to public 4 year (Pblc4Yr), we can observ that Distric of Columbia (DC) simply do not have enough public-4-year institutions to serve its students. State of Illinois is in a similar situation. Fig. 5 below, ranked states based on this ratio from low to high.

Figure 5 - Ranking of Service In-State Needs

As a side note concerning the Illinois, it was observed in the youtube video: 'College data(Enrollment) States your students come from -IPEDS migration' that Nebraska observed considerable out-of-state students from Illinois. It is now obvious that, not just Nebraska, but there aught be few other States that observe similar phenomena, especially those surrounding Illinois.

Reader should also be cautioned that the In-State-Needs Served ratio should be used carefully. There could have states that most of their students are only interested in 2-year colleges. In that case, there is no need for a lot of 4-year institutions to fulfill the In-State-Needs for 4-year institutions. So, the capacity is relevent to the needs, not the absolute count.

For the convenience of the reader, a table is presented below for the public-4-year sector.

Table 2 - Serving In-State Needs (IPEDS Migration public-4-year institution)

From State	Total College Goers	In-State Capacity	Goers/Capacity
DC	1,516	467	324.6%
IL	39,168	22,390	174.9%
NJ	32,665	21,232	153.8%
MN	21,944	16,304	134.6%
MA	20,936	15,907	131.6%
HI	3,996	3,093	129.2%
CT	12,323	9,568	128.8%
AK	3,388	2,767	122.4%
MD	18,407	15,971	115.3%
NY	57,896	51,273	112.9%
CA	144,800	131,418	110.2%
TX	99,923	90,772	110.1%
TN	21,144	19,904	106.2%
GA	51,083	49,313	103.6%
WA	32,171	31,221	103.0%
FL	110,114	108,130	101.8%
NV	13,399	13,325	100.6%
NC	32,768	32,879	99.7%
MO	19,353	19,466	99.4%
VA	31,698	32,322	98.1%
OH	48,482	50,605	95.8%
NM	6,789	7,097	95.7%
PA	43,129	45,061	95.7%
LA	20,700	21,658	95.6%
ID	5,787	6,065	95.4%
NE	8,213	8,647	95.0%
MI	44,122	47,305	93.3%
WI	27,428	29,610	92.6%
WY	1,298	1,423	91.2%
CO	24,449	27,624	88.5%
KS	11,032	12,580	87.7%
IN	29,044	33,919	85.6%
UT	16,053	18,890	85.0%
KY	15,624	18,643	83.8%
OK	14,369	17,148	83.8%
ME	3,678	4,407	83.5%
AR	12,053	14,771	81.6%
OR	8,820	11,408	77.3%
SD	3,914	5,158	75.9%
DE	5,942	8,075	73.6%
IA	9,654	13,113	73.6%
RI	3,136	4,380	71.6%
WV	7,851	10,967	71.6%
SC	13,253	18,700	70.9%
MT	4,436	6,354	69.8%
AZ	16,763	24,049	69.7%
NH	3,567	5,155	69.2%
AL	17,191	25,020	68.7%
MS	7,268	11,594	62.7%
VT	1,930	3,164	61.0%
ND	3,610	6,105	59.1%
AS	415	392	105.9%
FM	17	0	0.0%
GU	495	446	111.0%
MH	4	0	0.0%
MP	360	305	118.0%
PR	12,651	12,477	101.4%
PW	13	0	0.0%
VI	384	338	113.6%
Foreign countries	41,069	0	0.0%
State unknown	5,237	0	0.0%
Residence not reported	3,717	0	0.0%

Online Courses Search - Private College Programs IPEDS 2016

Begin

Note: Information provided in this article is obtained from the project 'DataMaster -IPEDS'. Detail of the project can be found in Youtube, and EdPond articles.

Using Panels provided by this tool, readers can locate online courses offered by the private colleges of the United States. The project is hosted at the Tableau Public. For online program offered by the public colleges of the United States, please see this tools/application.

Through the years, based on US Education Department's IPEDS (Integrated Postsecondary Education System) survey, the per-cent of students involved in distance classes have increased in almost all sectors of 2-year and 4-year colleges. The recent trend from year 2012 to 2016 can be visualized in my previous article:
"IPEDS College Data - Online/Distance Education Enrollment Trend".

Even though not directly related, private institutions in the United States also provide opportunities for students to obtain degrees through distance education 'completely'. Based on IPEDS definition, a 'Distance Education Program' is a program for which all the required coursework for program completion is able to be completed via distance education courses, in which the instructional content is delivered exclusively via distance education. IPEDS' definition for 'Distance Education Course' do reserve the possibilities that students maybe asked to physically participate in some activities like testing, orientation, or academic support services. This can mean that, in reality, some of the degrees listed in this articles may not be completely feasible remotely.

Anyway, it is the intention of this article to provide a list of disciplines and colleges that were reported to IPEDS as 'Distance Education Program'. Students are cautioned to check the details with institutions before committed to work toward the degrees.

Given all the above, let's now look at the overall picture of the 'Distance Education Program' offered by United States' private institutions.

Based on the IPEDS data, there are total 14,909 distance education programs offered by United States' private institutions, 4-year or 2-year. Of these programs, 3,853 are in the Associate or Certificate level. At the Bachelor-degree level, there are 5,181 programs. At higher degree levels, there are 1,017, 4,453, 378, and 27 programs respectively for post-bachelor, master, post-master, and doctor degree.

Information about these distance education programs can be examined via the following interactive panels.

Panel 1 - State Category

In panel 1, by selecting the state of interest and the degree level, user can exam the number of (distance education) programs offered in each discipline branch, depicted by the two-digit CIP (Classification of Instructional Program) code. By selecting all levels and all states, it can be observed that most programs are offered at the category of CIP 52, the Business, followed by CIP 51, the Health, and CIP 13, the Education branch. Summing over all states, at the Associate and Certificate level, the CIP 11, the Computer, ranked 3rd instead of CIP 13, the Education. At the bachelor level, CIP 24, the Libral Art, comes before CIP 13, and ranked as the 3rd. At the post bachelor and master level, CIP 13 is way ahead of Business (CIP 52) and Health (CIP 51), where they are of similar magnitude and traded each other with levels. For the doctor level, there are only 3 CIPs: 51, 13, and 44 (social services).

The state summary in Panel 1 is good if you are interested in in-state degrees. However, an online program being an online program is the freedom to enrolled from anywhere. In this case, searching from the program of interested maybe the way to go. Panel 2 shows exactly that.

Panel 2 - Find States

In Panel 2, reader can select the degree level:
    Assoicate and Certificates (DeCrtAssct)
    Bachelor (DeBchlr)
    Post Bachelor Certificates (DePstBchlr)
    Master (DeMstr)
    Post Master Certificates (DePstMstr)
    Doctor (DeDctr)
, the two-digit cip category, and, then, the cip program title. This allows reader to see from which states the selected programs are available. With this information, reader can continue to find out which college/institution offering the particular program.

Panel 3 - State Detail

With this above panel, reader can find specific programs offered at the 6-digit CIP level - example are the Accounting training in the Business field (CIP 52).

Panel 4 - Find college

With Panel 4, reader can narrow their selection to the desired programs and the colleges that offered the programs.

Panel 5 - Overview Table

Panel 5 allows readers to compare program offered by each state. By selecting the desired states, readers can view program offerings side by side. For policy makers and higher education leaders, these data can be important in making decisions on what program to provide for the benefits of the society.

End

Online Courses Search - Public College Program IPEDS

Begin

Note: Information provided in this article is obtained from the project 'DataMaster -IPEDS'. Detail of the project can be found in Youtube, and EdPond articles.

Using Panels provided in this tool/article, readers can locate online courses( program) offered by the public colleges of the United States. The project is hosted at the Tableau Public. For online programs offered by the private colleges of the United States, please see this article.

Through the years, based on US Education Department's IPEDS (Integrated Postsecondary Education System) survey, the per-cent of students involved in distance classes have increased in almost all sectors of 2-year and 4-year colleges. The recent trend from year 2012 to 2016 can be visualized in my previous article:
"IPEDS College Data - Online/Distance Education Enrollment Trend".

Even though not directly related, public institutions in the United States also provide opportunities for students to obtain degrees through distance education 'completely'. Based on IPEDS definition, a 'Distance Education Program' is a program for which all the required coursework for program completion is able to be completed via distance education courses, in which the instructional content is delivered exclusively via distance education. IPEDS' definition for 'Distance Education Course' do reserve the possibilities that students maybe asked to physically participate in some activities like testing, orientation, or academic support services. This can mean that, in reality, some of the degrees listed in this articles may not be completely feasible remotely.

Anyway, it is the intention of this article to provide a list of disciplines and colleges that were reported to IPEDS as 'Distance Education Program'. Students are cautioned to check the details with institutions before committed to work toward the degrees.

Given all the above, let's now look at the overall picture of the 'Distance Education Program' offered by United States' public institutions.

Based on the IPEDS data, there are total 13,380 distance education programs offered by United States' public institutions, 4-year or 2-year. Of these programs, 7,264 are in the Associate or Certificate level. At the Bachelor-degree level, there are 2,105 programs. At higher degree levels, there are 945, 2,820, 241, and 5 programs respectively for post-bachelor, master, post-master, and doctor degree.

Information about these distance education programs can be examined via the following interactive panels.

Panel 1 - State Category

In panel 1, by selecting the state of interest and the degree level, user can exam the number of (distance education) programs offered in each discipline branch, depicted by the two-digit CIP (Classification of Instructional Program) code. By selecting all levels and all states, it can be observed that most programs are offered at the category of CIP 52, the Business, followed by CIP 51, the Health, and CIP 13, the Education branch. Summing over all states, at the Associate and Certificate level, the CIP 11, the Computer, ranked 3rd instead of CIP 13, the Education. At the bachelor level, CIP 24, the Libral Art, comes before CIP 13, and ranked as the 3rd. At the post bachelor and master level, CIP 13 is way ahead of Business (CIP 52) and Health (CIP 51), where they are of similar magnitude and traded each other with levels. For the doctor level, there are only 3 CIPs: 51, 13, and 44 (social services).

The state summary in Panel 1 is good if you are interested in in-state degrees. However, an online program being an online program is the freedom to enrolled from anywhere. In this case, searching from the program of interested maybe the way to go. Panel 2 shows exactly that.

Panel 2 - Find States

In Panel 2, reader can select the degree level:
    Assoicate and Certificates (DeCrtAssct)
    Bachelor (DeBchlr)
    Post Bachelor Certificates (DePstBchlr)
    Master (DeMstr)
    Post Master Certificates (DePstMstr)
    Doctor (DeDctr)
, the two-digit cip category, and, then, the cip program title. This allows reader to see from which states the selected programs are available. With this information, reader can continue to find out which college/institution offering the particular program.

Panel 3 - State Detail

With this above panel, reader can find specific programs offered at the 6-digit CIP level - example are the Accounting training in the Business field (CIP 52).

Panel 4 - Find college

With Panel 4, reader can narrow their selection to the desired programs and the colleges that offered the programs.

Panel 5 - Overview Table

Panel 5 allows readers to compare program offered by each state. By selecting the desired states, readers can view program offerings side by side. For policy makers and higher education leaders, these data can be important in making decisions on what program to provide for the benefits of the society.

End

College Search, a tool and tutorial on using IPEDS college data

Begin
IPEDS (Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System) data is a vital data source for learning about colleges in the United States. As indicated in my previous articles, a good tool/program/application is very important in making a data usable.


In my previous article, I talked about how to use a program to monitoring the performance of peer institutions. In this article, I will go through the details of using the application to access IPEDS data and search for desired colleges/institutions. The process has many implications. For one, it can be used by high school graduates to search for college of interest. The same process can also be used by institution researchers in looking for potential peer institutions.

Information on the tool/program/application I used can be found at: IPEDS College Data UI and API project. The one interested for this article is: College Search - IPEDS data for High School Graduates + Researcher.


Before we begin, we need understand that when using any dataset, it is always important to have some basic knowledge about the industry/subject. For IPEDS, or, college/higher-education in the United States, these can include how institutions are classified and how these classification can change. For this article, what we need to understand is that institution can change - control, ownership included, and when searching them, it is important to look for them at a specific point in time, say, year. What you learn about an institution in one year, may or may not be hold for other years.

Back to the topic, the program we are going to look at has many uses. For this article, we will concentrate on just one tab/function - the institution tab. Under the institution tab, there are five sub-tabs that each provides well defined purposes to guide user to accomplish their goals.


The first sub-tab is the 'basic' sub-tab. The most important function for this tab is to establish the year of interest. User begin by searching the database for all years that are available and, then, select the year of interest. Once the year is selected, this tab also provide simple filter to limited the scope of search. Available options are detailed to assist user to make decisions.

After the basic categorical filter been applied, quantitative filtering can be applied by moving to the measures sub-tab. In this sub-tab, users can iteratively search and select the measures/quantities that are interested to them.

Once the measures of interest were selected, the Variable sub-tab is ready. In this tab,user get a chance to further qualify the measure/quantity they selected. For example, user maybe looking a the quantity of part-time enrolled male students while the qualifying 'factor' can be students levels, like undergraduate, or graduate students. By selecting applicable qualifying options and assign a name, a 'user-measure' is created ... like part-time-under-men, part-time-men-under-plus-graduate, ... etc.

With fully defined 'user-measures', user can now set the 'quantitative filters'. By moving to the Query sub-tab and typing in things like: part-time-under-men>1000 or
part-time-under-men/part-time-men-under-plus-graduate > 0.5, user can select institutions that met those criteria.

After the execution of the Query sub-tab, institutions found are appended to UnitId sub-tab. From there, you can retrieve the basic identity information of each selected institutions.

Once institutions were decided, user can use other major tabs to retrieve trend data about these institution and present these data in charts. For example: College Data Search - IPEDS tool for Peer Institutions Monitoring, the video and College Data Search, a tool - Monitoring Peer Institutions, the article.

As mentioned in the video, the process is very general. It can easily apply to any measures in the IPEDS database. The process also support the combination of measures and criteria. For example, user can even check if an institution's student minority ratio is higher than faculty's minority ratio.

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College Data Search, an IPEDS tool - Monitoring Peer Institutions

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IPEDS (Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System) data, without doubt, can be considered as the most important data source for United States' postsecondary education. However, even though IPEDS made efforts to make the data accessible to general public, barriers for using and analyzing those data are still high.

As described in my previous articles(IPEDS College Data - Distance Education Enrollment Trend, Higher Education IPEDS College Data UI and RESTful API - defnition, charting, demonstration) and youtube videos(IPEDS College Data UI and API project), at this moment, I am personally developing a data system that will make accessing to IPEDS data easier.

My most recent video that demonstrated the recent improved to my app/program can be found at the Youtube.com: College Data Search - IPEDS tool for Peer Institutions Monitoring

The video demonstrated how to use the app/program to monitor the status of a list of institutions over time. In our particular case, we use the peer institutions list of the Indiana University at Bloomington. The list can be obtained directly from Indiana University's web site: http://uirr.iu.edu/index.html

As is demonstrated by the video, Indiana University at Bloomington has the highest number of undergraduate degree-seeking enrollment headcount comparing to all its peers. On the other hand, the percent of students that took on-line classes ranked Indiana University the third from the last among its peers (year 2016).

One institution also stand out from the video. As shown in the video, the University of Texas at Arlington started out as an plausible peer of the Indiana University at Bloomington even though it did have the highest number of online students. Over the years, however, it is obvious that the University of Texas at Arlington has taken an initiative that grown its online community way faster than the rest of the institutions, including Indiana University at Bloomington.

The video also try to make few points on the peer institution selection. As pointed out, the most important thing in selecting peer institutions is look at the restrictions or constrains. In the case of the out-of-state online enrollment, one possible restriction would be the mission of the institution. For example, if the Indiana University at Bloomington was limited by either the public opinion or the legislature to focus its resources on in-state students while the University of Texas at Arlington is not. The two institutions, then, should not be considered peers even if they have the similar resources to operate.

With the improvement done to the app/program, an upcoming video will demonstrate a way to select institutions based on profiles - a process that helps selecting possible peer institutions. That same process can also be used by high school graduates looking for similar institutions that meet their college expectations.

Please visit my video and feel free to comment on it. For one, any indication of interest in the program will drive me to put more time into the project.

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