The Chronicle of Higher Education recently published its 2016 Almanac of higher education data. The almanac includes national and state level data in areas including student enrollment, student debt, salaries and research. Here is a sampling of data from the almanac pertaining to Utah institutions.

• Utah State University ranks third for growth between 2004-2014 among public doctoral institutions nationwide.
• Utah Valley University has the third highest number of international students among baccalaureate (non-research) institutions nationwide.
• 91% of Weber State University’s incoming freshmen students came from within the state, compared to Brigham Young University’s 32% and Western Governor’s University at 9%.
• Utah institutions don’t appear on the Most  Expensive College List. (Utah has the third lowest tuition for four-year public institutions.)
• More Utah-specific data:
  • Utah students’ ACT scores are slightly below the national average.
  • Average salaries of higher education employees are lower at Utah public institutions compared to Utah’s private non-profit institutions.
  • 88% of Utah college students are enrolled at four-year institutions compared with 67% nationwide, primarily due to the integrated roles USHE’s regional four-year institutions play with their embedded community college missions.
  • Utah ranks 42nd in per capita income, primarily because of its comparatively larger families and lowest average age of marriage. This also means families in Utah are the most likely to be paying for multiple college students per family at the same time. Hence, the relative overall cost burden of college is plausibly greater for Utah families, as available funds for college are spread more thinly within families.
  • Engineering research in Utah is 35% higher than the national average, partially due to Utah’s investment in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) fields and programs like the USHE Engineering Initiative and USTAR. This difference is demonstrated by Utah’s high rate of tech start-ups and comparisons to Silicon Valley.
• Enrollment growth in distance education (e.g. online courses and programs) at public and nonprofit institutions nationwide continue to outpace their for-profit counterparts.
• Almost ⅔ of US college students attending 4-year for-profit institutions enroll exclusively online. However, only 14% of all college students nationally enroll in college exclusively online, and just as many students enroll in some, but not all of their courses online.
• Average student loan amounts of US college students at for-profit institutions are consistently higher than non-profit and public institutions.

The Chronicle of Higher Education pulls from several sources for its Almanac data, available here:

The Almanac is one of a handful of helpful sources to compare Utah’s higher education institutions:

• USHE data resources
• US Department of Education College Scorecard
• Data USA (project partnership of Delloitte and MIT)
• College Navigator (National Center for Education Statistics)
• Big Future (The College Board)
• CollegeMeasures.org