NCHEMS Information Center for Higher Education Policymaking and Analysis

The National Center for Higher Education Management Systems wanted to provide state policymakers and analysts with timely and accurate data and information useful in making sound higher education policy decisions. 

We developed a dynamic web site that would allow the Information Center staff to dynamically publish statistical and graphical representations of measures.  Using vector data from the U.S. Census, WebFirst developed a custom GIS and visualization component to help the Information Center achieve their goals.  State and county measures (such as the percentage of undergraduate students who have completed their bachelor's degree) are depicted on a U.S. map with each state color-coded according to quartile rankings.

WebFirst has recently redesigned the higheredinfo website to add the following features:

• State Profiles – Indicator data on state ranking, value, lowest/highest among states from student success to policies and competitiveness
• Generate Scatterplot to plot various indicator data (e.g. Graduation Rate  vs. State Funding)
• Download data and images into pdf and / or excel formats