The data that we have found so far describe differing types of aid and their amounts, full-time enrollment, and education tax benefits over the years 1990-2015. Visuals compiled using this data compares the enrollment, total aid, and total tax benefits over these years. The source of this data that we have used in order to make the visuals we have so far, are from College Board. College Board is a website that students, teachers, and parents can use. Students can create accounts and use College Board to help them plan their path to a higher educational degree. College Board also provides information about financial aid and provides many data sets from past years for its users to look at. These aspects of its site then encourage College Board to provide reliable data to provide its users with a useful experience so that they recommend it, causing for retention and addition of users. This is described by the Better Business Bureau Business Review as they gave College Board an A+ on a scale of A+ to F with A+ being the highest grade.
One of my questions is whether the figures in your graph are actual dollars or inflation adjusted dollars - Is the amount of aid really rising or is it just going up because the value of the dollar is going down? My other big question is how do your questions in D relate to the issue that you brought up in A? As in, how is this going to tie in with the student experience of applying to college?
ReplyDeleteAlso, does the financial side of college have to do with parents income? Could you look into whether or not the average household income has increased or decreased recently? And if so, how does that affect this?
ReplyDeleteTo go further into this it would be cool to see if race or gender differences change can the amount of financial aid received. Seeing a trend over time with race or gender could provide insight into equality problems in education
ReplyDeleteTo go further into this it would be cool to see if race or gender differences change can the amount of financial aid received. Seeing a trend over time with race or gender could provide insight into equality problems in education
ReplyDeleteAnother avenue for you to consider is where the money is going (e.g. is it going to "elite" schools or less prestigious ones?). Also, you might want to explore why the cost of college is increasing so quickly over the past decade or so (my guess would be that College Board has some information on that).
ReplyDeleteWhat accounts for the dramatic shifts in each of the graphs around 2010? Why do the bars decrease gradually after the jump? It would be interesting to note any outside influences on the data surrounding this shift.
ReplyDeleteI think financial aid is also based on how much the parent(s) or guardian(s) make each year. I would suggest including this to see the correlation. Also I'm not sure it will be but it seems like it might be difficult to include why students decide to go to one college or another because there are so many deciding factors.
ReplyDeleteIt looks like all three graphs are decreasing around 2011. I wonder if the decrease in enrollment, aid, and tax benefits are all related because of one policy or social issue?
ReplyDeleteSomething to look into might be who the financial aid goes to. How do they figure out home much money a family will get and based on what qualifications. This might answer some of the questions on why the amount given is increasing or decreasing.
ReplyDeleteI really like where you are going here but I think you are under-utilizing your data here. Is there any other interesting graphs that you can create that would show the same or different trends in a different graph format? Bar charts are great but can only show so much. Would a line graph show the change over time better than a bar chart?
ReplyDeleteA comparison of private vs. public schools would also be interesting, as would seeing which colleges and universities in general provide the most aid.
ReplyDelete