Gracie Petty

Last week, I asked the question: is there a correlation between covid cases and wealth (measured by revenue per student)? I was unsatisfied with that method, however, as revenue/student does not accurately convey a colleges wealth—endowment is the key indicator of a college’s wealth. I figure that colleges with higher endowments have more resources to fight Covid-19 on its campus.

As my control variable, I have endowment/student. I chose this metric, as it normalizes for school size. In other words, 500 million dollars may be good for a school of 4,000 students, but it will not support a community of 400,000 students. As my dependent variable, I have % infected—that is, out of one hundred students, how many were infected? Once again, % infected accounts for the number of students within a university. Finally, I took fifty data points, for I did not have access to a data base which gave me the endowment of each school. I had to search each data point individually.

To be sure, there does not appear to be a strong correlation between a school’s endowment/student and its infection rate. As I stated in my last report, this could be a result of testing: schools with higher endowment/student may be able to afford more and better testing than their less-wealthy counterparts. With more testing comes more positive tests. Hence, these schools appear to have high case numbers.

Concerning the data: I thought a random sample of fifty data points would be good. The problem is, however, that the wealth of schools does not follow a normal distribution. Most schools have below 50,000 $ in endowment per student. Schools with 100,000-500,000$ in endowment per student are few and far between. Out of the fifty colleges in this sample, only four had over 100,000$ in endowment per student. Thus, this graph lacks data points, especially as the schools jump over the 100,000 $/student mark.

Though I did not find strong evidence concerning the connection between a school’s wealth and its ability to fight Covid—I did find evidence of a large disparity in higher education. When we think of higher education, we immediately think of the ivory tower institutions—the Ivy League, NESCAC, and other elite schools. But, for every wealthy school, there are four or five colleges struggling to get by and support their students.

 

Data Analyst: Jordan Eisenman

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The waffle graphs show the mode of instruction by geographic region in the US. The regions (Northeast, Midwest, West and South) are defined by the Census Bureau-designated regions (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_regions_of_the_United_States#Interstate_regions). As shown in the waffle graph, the West has an overwhelming percentage of colleges and universities with a “Primarily or Fully Online” mode of instruction, compared to other regions. The South has the greatest percentage of colleges and universities with a “Primarily or Fully In-Person” mode of instruction.

 

Data Analyst: Caitlin Welch

	Primarily or Fully Online	Primarily or Fully In-Person	Hybrid / Hyflex	Total
$0 – $15,000	11	8	4	23
$15,000 – $30,000	302	164	115	581
$30,000 – $45,000	121	172	56	349
$45,000 – $60,000	148	146	71	365
$60,000 – $75,000	112	50	36	198
$75,000 – $90,000	30	2	11	43
Total	724	542	293	1559

 

This visualization uses C2i data from 1559 institutions to study the division of 6 different cost of attendance categories across each different mode of instruction. The $15,000 – $30,000 cost of attendance category has the highest percentage of institutions in each mode of instruction category except for “Primarily or Fully In-Person” institutions, where the $30,000 – $45,000 cost of attendance category has the highest percentage of institutions.

 

Data Analyst: Rachel McLean

This graphic shows ongoing COVID testing by percent of undergraduate black students and mode of instruction. When the institution’s mode of instruction is hybrid, primarily in-person, and primarily online, no ongoing testing colleges have a higher black percentage compared schools with ongoing testing. This may indicate inequity in schools with a higher black percentage as they do not have access to the same COVID testing that schools with a higher white percentage have. However, 90% of the institutions in the United States do not have ongoing testing so a majority of the college population do not have access the ongoing COVID testing. The percent of undergraduate black students variable is from the IPEDS and represents the percentage of black undergraduate students in the institution.

 

Data Analyst: Meghan Corso