Preview: From Major to Targeted Clusters

The state of Iowa has established three targeted industry clusters: advanced manufacturing; bioscience; and information solutions. How have Iowa’s community colleges been supplying the industry? Above is an ideogram showing the path from program major (left) to targeted cluster (right). Obviously bioscience is being well-stocked, mostly from health science majors. I’m a bit surprised though […]

Preview: Community College Finances – Tufte Scatterplot

I’ve actually shown this graph before at a State Board of Education meeting last year. I don’t think it was received as well as I had hoped. Many people were worried about the “complexity” of the diagram and I did hear some murmuring when I flipped to the slide. Below is the image of the […]

Preview: Five-year In-state Retention Rate

Ever get a letter from your alma mater asking what you’ve been up to since you graduated? That data is used to see how well the college has been doing. It’s especially important for public colleges to see if most graduates stick around. Ever send one back? No? Well, most don’t. But that’s a pain […]

Preview: Visualizing Transitions into the Workforce

Today the Iowa Department of Education and Iowa Workforce Development released “Visualizing Transitions into the Workforce” poster. In short, DE and IWD partnered to follow students from Iowa community colleges into the workforce. The poster shows how specific majors lead to employment in various sectors in Iowa’s economy. The findings are discussed in the full […]

Preview: Visualizing Transitions to the Workforce

The Iowa Department of Education and Iowa Workforce Development have teamed together to track students from community college into the workforce. While we’ve looked at returns to degree and in-state retention rate, we wanted to see where kids were working. In short, we looked at majors and tracked them into the industry. We aggregated majors […]