External Resources


No, we won’t ever be able to mine all of the fascinating higher ed data that’s now available. But, we’ve assembled some of it here so you can geek out with us.

Data Sets

  • IPEDS is the U.S. Department of Education’s resource for college and university statistics. You can grab millions of data points here—4,000 institutions x 12 surveys x lots of questions per survey x lots of years! Here in IRAP, we most commonly use the “Look Up an Institution” feature. It can be difficult to navigate at first, so if you’re stuck, just call us.
  • The DOE’s College Scorecard data set was assembled to increase transparency for those interested in college quality. Since much of a college’s quality is not quantitative, we’re a bit skeptical, but there’s certainly no other place where IRS data about graduates’ earnings has been tied back to the schools they attended.
  • In IRAP, we take the college’s commitment to becoming anti-racist seriously. One of the best national resources for the effort is Opportunity Insights, now housed at Harvard, which shares datasets and code about social mobility and a variety of other outcomes.
  • The Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Employment Projections are fascinating for faculty who are tying the core competencies of the liberal arts to the careers of tomorrow.
  • For those interested in enrollment trends, WICHE’s projections of high school graduates is the place to start. Nathan Grawe’s book Demographics and the Demand for Higher Education does all of the analysis for us, and he updated his projections in a more recent book, The Agile College.

Studies and Assessment Tools

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