2 minute read

What Schools Create the Most Student Loans in the U.S.?

About Makeover Monday

MakeoverMonday is a social data project: “Each week we post a link to a chart, and its data, and then you rework the chart. Maybe you retell the story more effectively, or find a new story in the data. We’re curious to see the different approaches you all take. Whether it’s a simple bar chart or an elaborate infographic, we encourage everyone of all skills to partake. Together we can have broader conversations about and with data.”

Starting from Jan 08, 2018, I decided to put aside one hour on Monday weekly to create some visualization and find some insights from the data.

The datasets are published each week at: MakeoverMonday Datasets.

Makeover Monday 20210614

This week’s dataset is the student loans by schools in academic year 2020-2021. Student loan in the US has been a big financial burdent to many, so it’s definitely a very interesting topic to visualize. I really like the original viz as it shows both the school with highest loan size in the state, and also the size and school type (though it could be a bit hard to consume all the different dimensions). Seeing USC ranked 1st in CA is not a surprise lol.

My Visualization

I tried to plot gantt bars on top of the map to show the size of each school’s total loan size (similar to those building size vizzes), with another layer of state level total loans below it. Also, when you hover on each state, you can its the school with highest loan size of that state on the right.


Please notice that all the visualizations are designed for desktop view, so it is recommended to view them on a desktop device.

Dashboard link

Insights

  • When comparing by the total student loan originated, the top 1 school in most states are public school instead of private schools – there could be some bias as people going to private schools could be those more likely to afford the tuition);
  • But of course, this is looking at the total student loan – it is a different story if we compare the avg amoung of loan originated per recipient, for example, TX is the state with highest total loan size, but by avg loan size, it’s on the lower end, while CA have both very high total loan size and very high avg loan size.

Follow this link to find more weekly vizzes :)