New IPEDS Data: A graphical view of online ed by state and by sector

Update: I should have guessed this, but the visualizations don’t come through on RSS feeds, so you’ll need to click through to the article.

Reader Mike Himmelstein has rightly pointed out that our analysis of the new IPEDS data would benefit from using visualization tools instead of just tables. This comment led me to a multi-day investigation of which data visualization tool would best integrate into a WordPress blog while maintaining interactive data exploration. I tried MicroStrategy (great tool but cannot share without login), IBM Many Eyes (good public tool but limited in formatting), and several variations of Google Charts (not as rich in features as MicroStrategy, but close, and supports public sharing). In the end I’ve ended up using the Visualizer plugin to display Google Charts. All data below is for degree-granting institutions.

Let’s first look at the state-by-state data in a Geochart. This data tracks online ed in public higher ed institutions as of Fall 2012. I’m showing the data broken out by undergraduate and graduate students. The color scale is based on the percentage of students taking at least one online course, but if you hover over a state you can also see the percentage of students taking all of their courses online.

For the basic data combining undergraduate and graduate students in a table format, see this post.

Percentage of Public Higher Ed Undergrad Students Taking Online Courses, by State

Percentage of Public Higher Ed Grad Students Taking Online Courses, by State

Profile of All Degree-Seeking Higher Ed by Sector

In another post I showed the number and percentage of students taking online courses by sector – public, private and for-profit for both 4-year+ and 2-year. Hovering over the sector bars will show the data.