We have one main source we are deriving our data from which is the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data system (IPEDS). This is a common data set that is submitted by all colleges yearly. The rights for this data is posted by IPEDS themselves and is as follows “IPEDS is the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System. It is a system of interrelated surveys conducted annually by the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). IPEDS gathers information from every college, university, and technical and vocational institution that participates in the federal student financial aid programs.”
The following citation would be used for this data set:
Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS). “Institutional Characteristics: Student Charges for Academic Year Programs.” SPSS. National Center for Education Statistics: IPEDS Data Center, 2021. https://nces.ed.gov/ipeds/datacenter/DataFiles.aspx.
According to the IPEDS, people who come in to give data are usually college students (ages 18-23) who have given information that they are comfortable giving. Meaning that there is no sensitive information that must be taken out from the data sets that were not willingly given to them. This data is entirely ethical, and their privacy policy can be found HERE.
Our group has so far completed the data cleaning of the demographics and tuition data sets and is currently working on the visualization of the data. We have opted to do a visualization comparing yearly demographic and tuition data, as well as, doing a timeline of any new admissions implementations in their application process.
An issue we ran into was that the data includes a two year lag because colleges don’t post their data till later on so we will be ending our timeline at 2021 and not 2023.
Here is an update of the progress and contribution of each member so far:
- Jasmine: Most of my work for this project will be towards the end designing the website and formatting the data visualizations in a coherent sense. I have contributed to helping format and write the project components.
- Julian: My progress so far has been in completing the data cleaning and working with Bem to fulfill the data requirements, since we are both working on data cleaning and data sets.
- Nathan: Similar to Jasmine, most of my work will be in the form of creating the website for the project. So far I have helped by requesting the website and finding data that can be used in the project.
- Bemnet: Similar to Julian, most of my work has consisted of cleaning the data and working with him to complete anything that is needed of us when it comes to data.
- Karla: I am currently working on vizualizing our cleaned up data
4 thoughts on “Project Update and Source Documentation (Carleton Tuition vs. Demographics)”
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I think this project idea sounds really informative! I wonder which examples of demographics information you are focusing on like age, race & ethnicity, location, gender, or multiple. It would be helpful if there were visualizations for all of the demographic info comparing it to the tuition. But also each example of demographics compared to carleton tuition.
I am excited to see the end result of this project. It is very nice that all this data is available publicly but will be very useful to have a more accessible way to look at it. I am curious about if this is a complete set of data since you mentioned it is all reported by college students voluntarily.
This seems like a great project with lots of data that you can make into informative visualizations. This is important information for the school and we can learn a lot with suitable visualizations. Our group has the same problem where we only have data up to 2021, but I don’t think its a problem because there is enough data for other years.
I like your group’s resourcefulness in using IPEDS as a source. From experience, I know they have comprehensive and most importantly, complete data. One interesting thing to look for is that if your data includes 2021 data, it will end right as the pandemic reaches its peak. It’s definitely worth mentioning how it affected your two variables.