Tag: College Enrollment

I like playing with data to see what I might learn.

For this graph, I looked at data published by the University System of Maryland for the University of Maryland, College Park, about the number of applicants and the acceptance and enrollment rates. This graphic shows only Maryland residents. Looking at it this way, you can see that the number of applicants who applied and weren’t accepted and the number of students who enrolled almost doubled from 2008 to 2023. Almost doubled might be slightly exaggerated, but it is a good way to think about it. I wonder if that is the case for institutions that aren’t the flagship.

More of me playing around with data and publishing it to try to remember what I read. I put these maps on the same scale, with 20% being the lowest and 73% being the highest. Data was not available for Dorchester County.

Disadvantaged Graduates

The map for disadvantaged students’ immediate college enrollment rates from various local school systems in Maryland for the cohort year 2021-22 reveals significant disparities. Among the local school systems, Howard County had the highest enrollment rate at 45%. Following Howard County, Frederick and Harford counties had notable enrollment rates of 38%. On the other end of the spectrum, Worcester County had the lowest enrollment rate at just 20%, with Somerset County close behind at 22%. Larger school systems like Baltimore City and Prince George’s County showed relatively low enrollment rates at 31%. This data highlights the challenges faced by disadvantaged students in accessing higher education immediately after high school graduation, with enrollment rates generally lagging behind those of their non-disadvantaged peers, which is shown below. Overall 34% of disadvantaged graduates enrolled immediately after high school.

NoT disadvantaged Graduates

The map shows the immediate college enrollment rates for high school graduates from various local school systems in Maryland for the cohort year 2021-22, segmented by economic status and focusing on those who are not disadvantaged. Among the local school systems, Howard County had the highest percentage of high school graduates enrolled in college immediately, with a rate of 73%. Montgomery County followed with a 69% enrollment rate. On the other hand, Somerset County exhibited the lowest enrollment rate at 27%, significantly lower than the state average. Other notable observations include the relatively high enrollment rates in Frederick and Harford Counties, both at 61%, and the lower-than-average rates in Prince George's County at 43% and Baltimore City at 45%. Overall, the state average enrollment rate for not disadvantaged students was 58%. This data highlights the disparities in immediate college enrollment rates across different local school systems in Maryland.

Overall OBServations

Overall, the data reflects significant disparities in immediate college enrollment rates across different local school systems and between disadvantaged and not disadvantaged students. Statewide, the enrollment rate for not disadvantaged students was 58%, while disadvantaged students had a lower rate of 34%. Howard and Montgomery Counties consistently showed high enrollment rates for both groups, while Somerset and Worcester Counties showed some of the lowest rates. The substantial gap in enrollment rates between disadvantaged and not disadvantaged students across nearly all local school systems indicates a widespread issue that needs to be addressed to ensure equitable access to higher education opportunities for all students in Maryland.

Statewide of the 2021-2022 cohort, nearly half (49%) of Maryland public high school graduates immediately enrolled in college. Howard County Public Schools had the highest percentage of graduates immediately enrolling in college at 68%. Somerset County Public Schools had the lowest percentage of graduates immediately enrolling in college at 25%.

I have been busy with work, but now I have a pocket of time to dig into reading reports again. So you might see a few posts from me.

The Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) is the official application for financial assistance for
postsecondary education from the federal government. States, individual colleges and universities, and private scholarship programs use this information as well. Financial aid includes grants, educational loans, and work-study programs.

During the 2023 session, Senator Ellis put in a bill (Senate Bill 127) to require the Maryland Longitudinal Data System (MLDS) Center to report specified student FAFSA data to the Maryland General Assembly. MLDS must disaggregate the information by county and other student subgroups. I wrote the fiscal and policy note for the the bill. The bill was enacted as Chapter 688 of 2023.

FAFSA Completion for Maryland Aid

This first map shows the FAFSA completion rates by high school graduates by February 28, 2022. FAFSAs completed by this date are in time for consideration for the March 1 deadline for Maryland State financial aid. The map shows that Howard County Public School System has the highest FAFSA completion rate, at 57%, while Allegany County Public School System has the lowest, at 30%.

Due to federal data suppression requirements, the U.S. Department of Education does not report some FAFSA submissions and completions at the school level. The total is underreported since these data are used to calculate the overall local school system completion rates.

FAFSA Completion FOr Fall Enrollment

By fall enrollment, high school graduates from Howard County Public School System and Kent County Public School System have the highest FAFSA completion rates at 68%. While Dorchester County Public School System and Washington County Public School System have the the lowest FAFSA completion rates at 47%. Between February and August, the Allegany County Public School System had the highest percentage increase in FAFSAs completed (75%). While Howard County Public Schools, which had the highest FAFSA completion rate in February, had the lowest increase in FAFSAs completed (25%).

In November 2023, the U.S. Department of Education released new data about bachelor’s degree completion rates for transfer students. I have been interested in transfer students for years and it is a topic that I want to better understand. I use this blog to remember the data I read about and capture my initial thoughts. It is also a place for me to explore using data visualization tools.

DYAD

The researchers defined a dyad as a pair of institutions consisting of a public community college and a public or private four-year institution. The data only includes pairs where at least 30 students enrolled in the community college in 2014 and at least 30 students transferred and graduated from the four-year institution in at least 8 years. Nationally they identified 385 dyads, of which 8 were in Maryland.

Success of DYADS

Montgomery College belongs to four of the eight dyads in Maryland, showing that Montgomery College has a robust transfer program.

Maryland’s most successful dyad is students who transferred from Wor-Wic Community College to Salisbury University; 10% of students who transferred using that pathway graduated with a bachelor’s degree. Nationally, there were only 18 dyads with completion rates of more than 10%. The most successful dyad, Tri-County Technical College X Clemson University, had a completion rate of 20%. Kapiolani Community College X University of Hawaii at Manoa had a completion rate of 16%. Followed by four dyads with a completion rate of 13%, four dyads with a completion rate of 12%, and eight dyads with a completion rate of 11%.

Size of Transfer Programs

In addition to the completion rate of students transferring in a dyad, it is interesting to examine the size of a dyad program because in my mind a truly successful dyad will have both a high completion rate and be the "right" size. What the "right" size is I'm not sure of yet, but of a size that shows that is sufficient to support the continued transfer of students and meets the needs of the students.

The largest number of students transferred from the Community College of Baltimore County to Towson University (2,282). It looks like all transfer students from Montgomery College who transferred to a four-year institution are counted in all four Montgomery College dyads, since the number of transfer students in the denominator is 1,856 for all four dyads. This is not something I fully understood when first looking at the data. If this is true, Montgomery College has a very high total completion rate of nearly 17%.

I experimented to make a chart showing both the number of students who transferred to a four-year institution and the number of students who completed a bachelor's degree. I sorted it by percentage of students who completed a bachelor's degree. I believe the chart works fairly well at illustrating all the data, and it helped me see the potential issue with the Montgomery College data at the same time.

Immediate college enrollment decreased by 5 percentage points for both low-income and non-low-income HS graduates of the class of 2022.

Dual Enrollment College Pipeline

Twenty-one percent of public school 12th graders in Maryland during the 2019-2020 school year had a college record, that is they had been enrolled in a college class. The majority of these students participated in a dual enrollment program through their local school system. In fall 2020, the fall after they were slated to graduate from high school 79% of students who had a college record enrolled in college. This was during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Of those who enrolled in college, 75% enrolled at an in-State institution and 25% enrolled at an out-of-state institution. A little more than half of the in-State students (55%) enrolled at a community college, the remaining 45% enrolled at a public four-year or State-aided independent institution. Further, approximately half (51%) of students who enrolled in an in-State institution enrolled at their college of dual enrollment.

Source: Maryland Longitudinal Data System Center

Further Questions

I would be curious to know how college enrollment patterns of dual enrollment students compare to all public school 12th graders in Maryland. The Sankey graph above with that information would be much improved. Without that information, I am not really sure what it all means.

I am also interested in whether the dual enrollment credits earned transferred to the college in a meaningful way. According to MLDS data, students that took dual enrollment courses in high school earned an average of 2.14 credits.

Further, I wish that I had information on whether these students took AP or IB courses, which can also lead to college credit. I am curious if students are taking dual enrollment courses in addition to or instead of these courses. I wonder if the courses taken are primarily due to student choice, or due to the courses available at the student’s particular high school.

Finally, I am curious how these students perform in college.

This drill-down sunburst chart shows the breakdown of students that transferred to the University of Maryland College Park in fiscal 2020. The first layer shows the type of sending institution: Maryland Community Colleges; other University System of Maryland institutions; Maryland private institutions, including institutions that belong to the Maryland Univerity and College Association (MICUA); and out-of-state institutions. The second layer shows the institutions. However, since the original data source only shows the top institutions in a particular category, the names of not all out-of-state institutions are captured.

This chart is based on an Amcharts demo for a drill-down sunburst chart. This particular data only had two levels, but additional levels can be added if you have hierarchical data with multiple levels. As with several other charts I have tried making with Amcharts, this chart did not work in their add-in for WordPress. I however was able to add my data using Notepad. Then I saved the document as an HTML file by changing the file extension to .HTML. Then I uploaded the file to the media library for my website. Finally, I used some HTML code on this page to creat a frame and pull up the chart. I explained that process and shared the code I used in a previous post about my experiences making charts and maps with amcharts.

The chart shows that 63.6% of transfer students came from Maryland community colleges. Half (50.3%) of those students from Maryland community colleges came from Montgomery College, which is located in Montgomery County not far from UMCP. Anne Arundel Community College, Prince George’s Community College, and Howard Community College were also the source of a large number of transfer students. The second-largest source of transfer students is out-of-state institutions. For that category none of the sending schools are dominant. The biggest category is “other”.

UMCP Transfer Students in Fiscal 2020 Drill Down Sunburst Charth

Source: University System of Maryland, IRIS

These charts shows the student level: freshman, sophomore, junior, senior, or unclassified of students that transfer from Maryland community colleges to University System of Maryland institutions. According to the notes on the data by the University System of Maryland, the transfers are the number of undergraduates enrolled for the first time at the institution with known prior undergraduate post-secondary experience. The students may or may not have transferred credit.

Treemap Maryland Community College Transfer Students by Student Level

Source: University System of Maryland, IRIS, Maryland Community College Transfer Students by Student Level, Fiscal 2020

Drill Down SunBurst Maryland Community College Transfer Students by Student Level

Source: University System of Maryland, IRIS, Maryland Community College Transfer Students by Student Level, Fiscal 2020

I found code for a drill-down sunburst chart on Amchart’s website. I just popped in the data I had already typed up that has Bowie State Univesity spring 2021 headcount enrollment by area of origin. This version is kind of nice because you can drill down to see the details of the smaller categories. A disadvantage is that you can not see the drill-down categories until you drill down. In the future, I may be able to figure out how to show the hidden layers, but I am not sure if that will be an advantage, it might be too close together to see the categories well.

To drill down to a level click on the pie slice. This will expand the slice to the entire area of the pie. It is rather difficult to explain, it is easier to just play with the chart down below to understand how it operates.

The drill-down sunburst chart goes down to the level provided in the original data. For in-State students, the data shows to the county level the area of origin. For out-of-state students, it shows students from the major surrounding states and the District of Columbia. The states are New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, and Virginia. The remaining students are from other states, “foreign”, or of unknown origin.

To make the other sunburst chart look cleaner I divided the counties into five regions: Capital Region, Central Maryland, Southern Maryland, Western Maryland, and Eastern Shore. The regions and the counties assigned to each region are from the “Visit Maryland” website. For this semester Bowie State University had no students from Western Maryland counties, so that region is not on the chart. As with the other charts, I withhold judgment on the chart until I have an opportunity to play with it.

Bowie State University Drill Down SunBurst CHart

Source: University System of Maryland, IRIS, headcount by area of origin

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