Assignment 5

Introduction:

I have been asked by the UW System to analyze enrollment numbers for all UW system schools.  I have been given enrollment numbers for the number of students at UW schools from all 72 counties.  The simplified explanation is that the UW System wants to know why students choose the schools they are going to. 

Methods:

                To do this analysis our project leader gave us some data that he received from the UW system. Attached in this data are all the UW schools and their enrollment numbers. We only had to choose two to analyze and I picked UW-Eau Claire and UW-Green Bay. Other data associated with this file is the number of citizens in each county with a bachelor’s degree and the median household income for that county. We are also given the distance each County (from its center) is from the different universities. We ran a linear regression analysis and I found four variables that stuck out in terms of their statistical significance (rejecting the null hypothesis, which is that there is no linear association between any two variables). These variables are the distance the students’ home county is from their university (for both UWEC and UWGB), the counties residual bachelor degree count (for UWEC), and the county’s median household income (for UWGB). With these varibles I was able to make four separate maps that I could then further analyze to try and pick apart why counties are sending more or less students to UWEC and UWGB.                    

Results:

Model		Unstandardized Coefficients		Standardized Coefficients	t	Sig.
		B	Std. Error	Beta
1	(Constant)	8.518	6.797		1.253	.214
	EAUVAR	.124	.004	.972	34.626	.000

 

Table 2: Table showing UWEC Bachelors Degree Variable

Model		Unstandardized Coefficients		Standardized Coefficients	t	Sig.
		B	Std. Error	Beta
1	(Constant)	-126.472	78.935		-1.602	.114
	PerBSDeg	4283.038	1381.570	.347	3.100	.003

Table 2: Table showing UWEC Bachelors Degree Variable

Model		Unstandardized Coefficients		Standardized Coefficients	t	Sig.
		B	Std. Error	Beta
1	(Constant)	-80.982	116.509		-.695	.489
	MEDHHI	.006	.004	.193	1.645	.104

Table 3: Table showing UWGB Distance Variable

Model		Unstandardized Coefficients		Standardized Coefficients	t	Sig.
		B	Std. Error	Beta
1	(Constant)	22.782	4.911		4.639	.000
	GBYVAR	.026	.001	.981	41.768	.000



Table 4: Table showing UWGB Median Household Income Variable

Figure 1: Map showing UWEC's Distance Variable

Figure 2: Map showing UWEC's Bachelors Degree Variable

Figure 3: Map showing UWGB's Distance Variable

Figure 4: Map showing UWGB's Bachelors Degree Variable

              

Conclusion:

                We can see from the maps and charts above that we can spatially recognize some potentially significant reasons as to why students may attend certain universities. Let us focus on UW-Eau Claire. We can see that by the surrounding orange counties that many of those students may have come to Eau Claire due to how close it is to their hometown. As we get further away we can see that pattern slowly start to disperse. Eau Claire County of course sends a lot of its students to UWEC. Then we get to Counties such as Milwaukee, Door, and Bayfield. These counties have a low number of students sent, Why? Maybe because of cultural differences, I would say that people who grew up in Milwaukee may find Eau Claire very appealing. Maybe because of age differences, Door County has a lot of retired older couples. As far as Bayfield I’m not sure, maybe because many of those students want to go to UM-Duluth. When looking at the Eau Claire bachelor’s degree map we can see that there is four counties that stick out abruptly and in no apparent pattern. These counties are Marathon, Brown, Dane, and Waukesha and I think I may know why they send a lot. Inside or near these counties we can find UW-Stevens Point, UW-Green Bay, UW-Madison, and UW-Milwaukee. It is highly possible that many of those that graduated from their stayed and raised their families there and are more likely to send their children to college than the average Wisconsin family.

                When looking at UW-Green Bay we can see by their distance map there are clearly marked zones of dispersion. These zones are indicated by the purple lines and as we get farther from green bay, less and less counties send a large amount of students, however, why is Brown County itself so low? This may be because of the old adage that kids want to get out of the house and away and explore different parts of the world (in this case, different parts of Wisconsin). Eau Claire didn’t have this problem but Brown County has a lot more people than Eau Claire County does so that may be the reason why the numbers are so skewed. When looking at the other UW-GB map we can see that many counties close to Green Bay that have a high number of bachelor degrees, have sent their students to UW-GB. Maybe those high income families find it easier to send their student to the school nearby. St Croix County on the west end of Wisconsin has a really low number of students sent. I think that may because all those students decide to go to the twin cities for school and instead of treading all the way across Wisconsin.

                You could probably go a lot more in depth in this study to find more reasons as to what pulls or pushes people away from certain schools. It will always be difficult to know for sure since you cannot be inside the mind of an 18 year getting ready to make one of the biggest and most important decisions of their life.