This year?s Conference in Alexandria, VA was a big success, and it would not have been possible without our devoted members. We would like to thank all those who attended ? your participation means interesting questions to presenters, new connections among professionals, and a stronger APDU. Conference presentations can be found here.
APDU?s September Job Board can now be found on the APDU website. Thank you to all who submitted job postings for this month! You can submit your job postings to: info@apdu.org.
An ad hoc group of academics, tech-company executives, and policy makers convened earlier this summer to identify the ethical norms colleges should use in handling the reams of data they?re increasingly accumulating about their students’ lives in and outside the classroom. Recently, the group made public the summaries of that work, with a pledge from the convening?s organizers that the next step in the process would be enlisting a broader network from the academic and business worlds to begin creating concrete “responsible use of student data” policies for the information on students produced from learning-management systems, automated courseware, registration portals, and other electronic systems.
Everyone?s favorite internet bulletin board can give researchers insights into regional trends. A new paper in the Journal of Planning Education and Research analyzed 11 million Craigslist rental listings posted between May and July 2014 across the U.S. and found a treasure trove of information on regional and local housing trends.
There is widespread agreement about data shortcomings in the College Scorecard and the need to address them. This includes researchers looking to gain a better sense of the value individual colleges are providing to students, taxpayers looking to ensure their massive federal investment is paying off, and the institutions themselves who worry that the current data is being used to draw incomplete conclusions about their performance with students. With that kind of unanimity across the board, fixing this imperfect data in the next reauthorization of Higher Education Act should be a no-brainer.
Recently, the Department of Commerce became one of the first federal agencies to have its datasets play a starring role in the TechCrunch Disrupt conference hackathon in San Francisco. TechCrunch Disrupt is a major event in the start-up world, attracting some of the world?s best development talent building seriously disruptive stuff. The Department of Commerce is drawing on this crowd of hackers to harness the dazzling flood of data flowing from NIST?s ?Net Zero Home? ? a lab home equipped with advanced technologies that allow the place to produce as much energy as it uses, simulating the energy use and production as if four people lived there.
The U.S. Census Bureau recently released two important sources for health insurance statistics in the United States: the Annual Social and Economic Supplement to the Current Population Survey and the American Community Survey. Many people ask which estimate they should use. Well, it depends.
Income, poverty and health insurance statistics for 2015 from the Current Population Survey Annual Social and Economic Supplement (CPS ASEC) were recently released. In all likelihood, the national statistics from these two sources will not be identical. Why not- which is correct? Well, it is complicated.
Communities across the nation now have new American Community Survey (ACS) statistics to help them make informed decisions. The ACS one-year estimates provide statistics on dozens of economic, social, housing and demographic topics that are important to people and communities across America.
Chicago-based web developer and artist Nicholas Rougeux designs mesmerizing data visualizations using such disparate subject matter as tangled freeway interchanges, Shakespeare sonnets, and urban weather patterns as fodder. His latest project, ?Off the Staff,? visualizes notes from famous classical music scores, part of a long tradition of experimental notation that transforms standard sheet music into works of expressive art. Or in this case, like a stylized riff on Rorschach test ink blots.
Did you work on a great report that you want your colleagues to know about? Just email us and we?ll include it here.
Calls for Comment
APDU maintains a list of open calls for comment on proposed federal data collections. We periodically alert APDU members to newly added calls for comment. Over the last several weeks, calls for comment on the following proposed data collections were published in the Federal Register (with due date):
Census Bureau
Notice of Temporary Suspension of the Special Census Program (September 30, 2017)
Department of Commerce
Commission on Evidence-Based Policymaking (November 14, 2016)
Economic Research Service
Risk Preferences and Demand for Crop Insurance and Cover Crop Programs (November 15, 2016)
National Agricultural Statistics Service
Nursery and Christmas Tree Production Surveys
National Center for Education Statistics
Common Core of Data (CCD) School-Level Finance Survey (SLFS) 2016-2018 (November 15, 2016)
