Tag: Enrollment

  • Twenty six years of enrollment at Public Research 1 Universities

    Twenty six years of enrollment at Public Research 1 Universities

    A while ago, I made the claim that Oregon State University has the longest streak of consecutive years of fall-over-fall enrollment growth of any public, Research 1 university in America.  A few people have asked me, not exactly doubting the claim, but thinking maybe I had made a mistake, for the source of it.

    This started as a curiosity: I knew from our own internal documentation that the last time OSU (the oldest OSU…not the one in Ohio or Oklahoma) had a fall-to-fall enrollment drop was 1996, and I was curious to see if any other institution could make that claim. So I went to the IPEDS Data Center and downloaded the data. 

    It’s below.  First, a few points: My comparison group is 108 Public, four-year, Research 1 Universities as designated by the Carnegie Commission on Higher Education as of Fall, 2022, the latest IPEDS data available. The R1 designation is actually called “Doctoral Institutions: Very High Research Activity” but the nickname R1 is a holdover from prior years. The category contains those institutions who produce the highest research activity and output among American universities.

    What you can’t see here is that 2023 showed an increase (it’s not yet in IPEDS, but trust me), and that 2024 will also show an increase once our census is final.  So OSU’s record is the 26 shown, plus last year, plus this coming year, for a total of 28 years.

    There are a couple of small anomalies with the data, as there always seems to be.  First, some institutions missed a year or two in their reporting.  Even if those years had shown an increase, they were already nullified by other decreases. And Penn State has bounced around from being one institution to being several to being one again; this too does not seem to make a difference in the tally.

    The first chart here shows all years and all institutions (you’ll have to scroll down to see them all using the bar on the right.)  You’ll notice that every institution shown (other than OSU) has at least two years with a blue box after 1997, meaning a decrease.  Hover over the box for details.  Orange shows an increase from the prior year.

    The second chart shows individual enrollment data for any institution you select, using the filter at the top.  The bars are colored similarly: Orange for increase, and blue for decrease.

    If I’ve missed something or you think these data points are wrong, let me know.  If a university decided intentionally to shrink, for whatever reason, that’s interesting, but not the point of this visualization. If you want to look at just graduates or undergraduates or men or women or students of color or some other variable, I encourage you to read my posts here and here about how to download IPEDS data for yourself. 

    And as always, leave a comment below if you find something interesting.

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  • Enrollment is complicated, redux

    Enrollment is complicated, redux

     Enrollment, as I like to say, is complicated.  But that never stopped anyone from asking a question like, “How does enrollment look?”

    To help answer, I downloaded IPEDS data of enrollment from 2009 to 2022, breaking it out by full-time and part-time, graduate and undergraduate, and gender, and put it into three different views, below, using the tabs across the top.  As always, you need to be a bit careful jumping to any conclusions about this: There is no easy (or even any hard) way I know of to account for the way Penn State has named and renamed itself over time, and changed the way it reported data, for instance, so anomalies will always show up there. 

    But for the most part, this information is very accurate. 

    The first view shows summary data.  This is just to get topline information about trends in US higher education enrollments over time.  Choose the type of enrollment at top right, then filter down to the specific categories you’d like to see.  You cannot break anything by interacting.

    The second view can be a little messy, but is handy for my admissions and enrollment management colleagues.  It shows market share of every institution in a state; you can only select one state at a time, and the view starts with Washington, where you see UW and WSU dominate.  But what if you want to look at just private colleges? One click will get you there (and the percent of total will recalculate to only that segment).  The same thing applies if you want to look at the enrollment of full-time men at community colleges in Tennessee.  Just click until you get what you need.

    The third view started out mostly as fun, but I learned a few things from it, which is always nice. Some examples are in this Twitter thread (which is a series of sequential tweets tied together.)

    This blog is mostly a public service to parents, students, and high school counselors, who should always browse to your heart’s content and consider it free.  But if you use this in your work, you can support my hosting, computer, and software costs by buying me a coffee at this link.

    As always, let me know what you find interesting, compelling, or just hard to believe. 



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