As shown in the visualizations, over the past decade, both Carleton’s tuition and diversity have proved to express some kind of increase. This contradicts our initial assumption that as Carleton’s tuition increased, its diversity would decrease due to it being less affordable for people from underprivileged backgrounds. While we would like to see Carleton more diverse than it is now, we understand that its high comprehensive cost of attendance is unaffordable for many families and appreciate the work that Carleton has done to promote diversity on campus and provide financial aid to students that otherwise would not have been able to attend Carleton.
One area that hindered our ability to draw more definitive conclusions was our inability to access all of the data we wanted. We were unable to obtain information regarding the demographics or household incomes of students who applied to Carleton or were accepted and did not attend, so we cannot draw a conclusion as to whether or not Carleton’s student body’s demographics match its applicants’ or if it was more common for students of a certain race/financial status to not attend Carleton even after being accepted. Similarly, we could not find data about the average household incomes of different racial groups at Carleton, which would have helped us draw a conclusion as to how tuition and financial aid affect Carleton’s demographics.
If we were to continue this project, we would like to examine financial aid at Carleton. More specifically, we would like to find information about the average financial aid amount for different racial groups at Carleton and which types of financial aid this takes the form of (grants, loans, scholarships, on-campus work, etc.). This information would help us better understand the barriers that Carleton’s high cost of attendance creates for its students, who is most burdened by these barriers, and how they are able to overcome the barriers.
