Data Blog

I looked at the mask policies for football stadiums of Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) institutions which is the top level of football in the United States. 54.8% of FBS universities required masks either indoors or outdoors. The Far West and Mid-East regions had the largest percentage of schools that required masks indoors or outdoors to enter the football stadium while the Southwest had the largest percentage of schools which did not require or encourage mask-wearing in their football stadiums. The mask policy data was found using C2i’s data collection and the geographic data was from IPEDS.

 

Data Analyst: Meghan Corso

This visualization shows the mask policies for football stadiums of Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) institutions which is the top-level college football in the United States. I compared the distribution of mask policies in Fall 2021 across FBS conferences. Overall, the Pac-12, Big Ten, and the ACC had the largest percentage of schools that required masks indoors or outdoors. On the other hand, the Sun Belt, Conference USA, and Southeastern Conference had the largest percentage of schools that did not require masks. All three conferences are primarily in the southern region of the United States. The data was found using C2i’s data collection of IHE Football Policy.

Data Analyst: Meghan Corso

This graphic shows the specific Fall 2021 Vaccination plan for each U.S. university. As shown, the majority of schools “encourage” vaccines, but do not have mandates in place. Notably as well, there are geographic trends for vaccine mandates; the Northeast, Mid East, and Far West all have a large population of vaccine required schools. On the other side of the spectrum, the Plains, Southeast, and Southwest all have larger percentages of non-vaccine required universities. Overall, the majority of U.S. universities encourage vaccines, but less than a third require vaccinations, as seen from the table below. The vaccine plans were found from the Fall 2021 Vaccine Plan data collection which was collected in July 2021. The geographic information was used from IPEDS.

Data Analyst: Emily Paton

This boxplot shows the number of undergraduates infected in the spring semester of 2021 by institution enrollment. The vertical black line in the green boxes indicates the median number of undergraduates infected in each enrollment category. The black dots indicate outliers within each category. Institutions with the highest enrollment have the highest median number of students infected, while institutions with lower enrollment have the lowest median number of students infected.

 

Data Analyst: Rachel McLean

This graphic shows the Spring 2021 mode of instruction by the institution location. The variable institution location measures the degree of urbanization of the institution’s location. Institutions located in a town or a rural area have a higher percentage of primarily or fully in-person than institutions located in a city or suburb. Institutions located in a city or a suburb have a higher percentage of primarily or fully online than institutions located in a town or in a rural area. Colleges located in a city or suburb are in a more concentrated area than a town or rural area so they may have to be more cautious due to the threat of COVID. Interestingly, the difference between primarily or fully online for institution located in a city and an institution located in a rural area is only three percentage points, a lot less than I was expecting.

 

Data Analyst: Meghan Corso