MPC launches IPUMS Higher Ed, new data tool for researching education attainment

Woman in a lab coat and gloves working on lab equipment

The Minnesota Population Center has released a new data project: IPUMS Higher Ed. IPUMS Higher Ed is composed of three National Science Foundation surveys of college degree holders in the United States:  the National Survey of College Graduates, the Survey of Doctorate Recipients, and the National Survey of Recent College Graduates.  Only the respondents who have a degree in science or engineering (or related fields) or work in a science or engineering occupation are included in the SESTAT file for that year.  The first version of IPUMS Higher Ed website will provide integrated SESTAT and SDR files from 1993 to 2013.

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New Frontiers in Big Data

Figure1 Big Data Chart1

By 2020, MPC will make freely available to researchers worldwide 100% count U.S. Census microdata through 1940. This dataset will include over 650 million individual-level (1850-1940) and 7.5 million household-level records (1790-1840). The microdata represents the fruition of longstanding collaborations between MPC and the nation’s two largest genealogical organizations—Ancestry.com and FamilySearch—to leverage genealogical data for scientific purposes.

“The importance of this massive donation of census data would be difficult to overstate,” says MPC Director Steve Ruggles. “This is one of the largest-scale data-entry efforts ever undertaken.”

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