Data adventures

In the world of research, there are few tasks more glamorous than digging for data.  If the “d” word hasn’t put you to sleep yet, read on.  Seriously, the hunt for data is just like an Indiana Jones adventure.  Oh yeah, I mean action, adventure, the whole shabang.  Well, maybe there’s not quite as much punching, daredevil moves, car chases, wild animals, or exotic exploits…but other than that it’s pretty much the same thing.  Yeah, um, at least I tell myself that so it makes the research a bit more fun!

Over the past year I’ve been on a hunt for state-level data on higher ed finance, college participation, and economic indicators.  I’ve explored the depths of the world wide web, emailed and called people in far away lands, and have devoted countless hours staring at the depths of my computer monitor’s soul.  If this isn’t what makes for an Indiana Jones adventure, then I don’t know what does.  Are you buying it?  Can you see the movie now?  Indiana Jones and the Search for the Lost Data File.  Blockbuster hit written all over it!  Oh  yeah. 

Ok, I digress.  I do have a point to this blog.  I want to share an awesome data resource with folks who might be on similar “data hunts.”  It’s not easy hunting down the right info from the most legitimate source, so here’s a link provided by Lexis Nexis statistical data center.  If you have access to the LN site, you can dig around here and get state-level data ranging from things like new housing starts, number of drug arrests per capita, bankruptcies, amount of protein in the food supply,  air quality index, unemployment rates, control of political parties, election results…and of course education data.  The list goes on and on.  If you’re a researcher interested in state-level economic, education, political, social, or environmental data this should be the first stop on your research journey.  I wish I had known about it sooner!

Oh yeah, and you can even print out charts and graphs like the ones below:

Higher ed and President Obama

I caught this NPR clip (here) earlier this week discussing how President Obama might address some higher education issues. A couple of news articles covering the same topic can be found here and here and the best one is here.

Perceptions of elitism

I like to think that I’m committed to educational opportunity and equality. That everybody should have a real chance at pursuing life goals with as few barriers as possible. I like to think that I’m committed to a cause of social justice, that equality of opportunity is the heart of any successful democracy. BUT, sometimes I step back and think “what are colleges creating?” I’m committed to getting more folks to college, but for what? A picture says a thousand words. Yeah, it’ s a bit unfair because for every “elitist” college grad I’ve met, I’ve also met about 20 “non-elitist” college grads. And I can point out a lot of non-college grads who match the elitist profile. The knife cuts both ways. But the food for thought that this picture makes my mind chew on is that colleges have a lot of ground to make up in terms of redefining higher education’s role in society. Colleges could do much more in terms of preparing students to be world citizens, to be engaged citizens, and to work towards improving the human condition.

Unemployment and educational opportunity

A new report from researchers at the National Bureau of Economic Research show that welfare reform of the 1990’s has decreased (rather than increased) college participation rates for low-income mothers. This study gives a perfect example of how counter-intuitive some of our national social policies are impacting individuals. Investing in “human capital” is the most successful way to grow an economy in the long-run, but reform efforts are actually inhibiting indivuals from investing in human capital. That makes no sense to me. Look, unemployment claims have been skyrocketing during the current economic recession…yet, there’s no strategic plan that is getting unemployed folks to pursue formal training or credentialling.

What if the feds provided incentives for unemployed workers to enroll in college while they’re laid off? Or what if the feds counted college enrollment as a “job” so that welfare recipients would have an incentive to transition from welfare to “work”?  Currently, neither of these options are in play. Instead, we’re missing opportunity after opportunity to invest in human capital and it’s only going to hurt us more in the long-run. We’re living in an era where our youngsters are less educated than our adults and other countries are zipping past us in terms of college attainment rates. Tragedy of the commons or the road to serfdom? I’m not sure which, but neither is a rosy scenario for our future.

Democracy Journal

If you haven’t had a chance to check out Democracy Journal, now is a good time to do so.  It’s one of the best new places to share progressive ideas addressing social problems ranging from tax policy, foreign affairs, health care reform, and improving education. In the upcoming issue, I’ll have an editorial published in response to Theda Skocpol (bio) and Suzanne Mettler’s (bio) Fall article about improving postsecondary education access and social stratification.

Dr. Skocpol and Dr. Mettler call out several federal and state policies that

Conference presentation

Next week, I’ll be down in Florida for the annual Association for the Study of Higher Education (here) research conference.  I’ve only been to the ASHE conference one other time, so I’m looking forward to round two and seeing some interesting presentations.  Last year, I presented some preliminary research I’ve done on tuition discouting practices at public colleges. After getting some positive feedback from folks at the conference, I decided to pursue this line of research for my dissertation. If you want to check out that 2007 presentation, you can click here (it’s a powerpoint file).

This year…

Educational attainment in a global society

The Education Trust released a report this week showing that the U.S. is falling behind other industrialized countries when measuring high school graduation rates.  What makes this even scarrier (Happy Halloween, by the way) is the fact that my generation of 20-something year olds is actually worse off than our parents’ generation in terms of educational attainment.  Wait.  Let me say that again. My entire generation, the “Baby Boom Echo,” is actually LESS educated than our parent’s generation.  It’s true, you gotta see it to believe it (here).

Podcasts on enrollment management

Check out these podcasts by the USC Center for Enrollment Research, Policy, and Practice if you’re interested in enrollment management, college finance, or college access. They’re interviewing some of the nation’s experts on these topics, so hopefully these podcasts will have some nuggets of wisdom for folks to think about. Just passing it along.

Higher Ed Job Search Links

Even though I’m not officially on the job market (yet), I search for jobs almost daily. It’s good to get an idea of what skills etc. are needed to make yourself marketable, so I’m sharing some good resources that I’ve found handy in the world of higher education policy studies:

Higher Ed Jobs – here
Chronicle of Higher Education – here
Inside Higher Ed – here
Assoc for Institutional Research – here
Society for College & Univ Planning – here
Assoc for the Study of Higher Ed – here
American Educational Research Assoc – here
PhD’s.org Social Science Jobs – here
Educational Leadership Jobs – here
University Council for Educational Administration - here
Northern Arizona University Job Bank – here
Vanderbilt University Fellowship Link – here
Education Keys – here
American Planning Assoc – here 
Planetizen – here
Chronicle of Philanthropy – here

You’ll notice that a lot of jobs are cross-listed among these sources, but my philosophy is that it’s better to search too much than not enough.  Happy hunting…

Knocking the rust off

It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything on this blog. I suppose after my qualifying exams, I pretty much lost all motivation to do anything related to school or dissertation work! But, school began a couple of weeks ago and I’m finally awakening out of hibernation. Or so I’m trying to tell myself.

In my attempt to get back into the right mindset of “dissertating,” I wanted to share a quick post about an idea that I would love to see pick up some political momentum. Long story short…