Author: Blake Decker

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Measuring “Quality of Life”: Where Does Texas Rank?

In the past two blog posts, we have looked at data that have painted the state of Texas in a very good light in terms of overall rankings for top states for business and a quality workforce. One of the areas in which Texas has not fared well has been in the “Quality of Life”…

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Connection Between a Quality Workforce and A State’s Success

The connection between a quality workforce and the success of a state is unquestioned. In our previous blog post, we introduced America’s Top States for Business study from 2022. Throughout the 14 years of the CNBC study, Texas has had the best average ranking of 2.2 across all years in the data. However, in the last…

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Top States for Business: Where Does Texas Rank?

Throughout our current blog series, we have primarily sought to better understand the factors that have and will continue to influence enrollment in higher education in Texas. We now want to connect the successful preparation of college and university students to real-world outcomes at the state level. To this end, we turn our attention to CNBC’s…

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Educational Attainment in Texas: Some College, No Degree

As a follow-up to our previous blog post looking at broad trends in educational attainment across the United States, we wanted to zoom into the state of Texas specifically to see how educational attainment levels have changed over time. Using the American Community Survey (ACS) data, the visualizations below show data from two perspectives: the counties within 50…

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Trends in Educational Attainment: Some College, No Degree

In our blog series on factors influencing enrollment in higher education, we now turn our lens to the current status of educational attainment in Texas and the United States. We will use data from the American Community Survey (ACS) that provides educational attainment estimates for adults (ages 25 and older) by seven categories ranging from…

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County Migration in Texas

In our previous blog post, we looked at state-to-state migration trends, digging into the American Community Survey (ACS) migration flows data to look at in-migration, out-migration, and net migration trends across American states. We found that Texas had the second-highest net increase in the 2020 data with almost 98,000 new residents, only trailing the state of Florida’s 170K…

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State-to-State Migration Trends in the United States

Migration Trends Across the USA Throughout this series on factors related to higher education enrollment, we have looked at data pertaining to the “birth dearth” in the US and population changes based on age, race and ethnicity. Another key element to understanding the future of enrollment in colleges and universities is movement of individuals between…

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Population Trends by State: Race and Ethnicity

Population Trends by State: Race and Ethnicity Throughout our series on factors affecting current and future enrollments in higher education in Texas, we have looked at trends in birth rates, high school graduation rates, and age-related demographics. With the US Census Bureau’s recent release of the newest edition of the American Community Survey (ACS) data,…

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Population Trends in Texas by University and County

Population Trends in Texas by University and County The US Census Bureau released the newest edition of the American Community Survey (ACS) data last week, publishing updated 5-year estimates (2017-2021). The timeliness of this release allows us to explore the most up-to-date data regarding trends in the population in Texas. This blog post narrows the…