Are Students More T-Shaped?Julia Duros

Senior Project, 2013Computer Science and Economics

Advisors: Chris Fernandes, Tomas Dvorak

T vs. I-Shaped Individuals

Depth

Depth

Breadth

Question

Have students taken a broader range of courses now than in the past?

Course Pages

Course Schedules Page (public)

Course Roster Page (private)

Steps to Gather Data

Union College course roster data scraped• Wrote Python script:

1. Saved all pages as HTML2. Put each page’s data into CSV file

Course roster Program Data file

Manipulating the Data

Import to StataOrganize, manipulate, and analyze data

Description of Data

For each student:• Identifier• Major• Enrollment information

Department Term and Year

Size of Data

28,194 course roster pages

4,113 students168,370 course enrollments

Courses 2001-2012• Students in Class Years 2004-2012

Breadth

Breadth of education is one dimension of interdisciplinarity

Measured by number of unique departments represented on transcript

Results

2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 20120

2

4

6

8

10

12

14

16

Average Number of Unique Departments Taken by Students

Class Year

Nu

mb

er

of

Dep

art

men

ts

Why the increase?

Possible factors: Number of departments/programs Major requirements Total courses taken

Results

2000 2002 2004 2006 2008 2010 20120

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

Departments/Programs

Year

Nu

mb

er

of

Dep

art

men

ts

Results

2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 20120

2

4

6

8

10

12

14

16

Average Number of Unique Departments Taken by Students

All de-partments

Departments in Existence 2001-2012

Class Year

Nu

mb

er

of

Dep

art

men

ts

Results

Biology Computer Science

English Political Science

All Majors0

2

4

6

8

10

12

Average Number of Unique Departments Taken by Students, 2004-2012

Major

Nu

mb

er

of

Dep

art

men

ts

Results

Academic Year Biology Comp. Sci. English Poli. Sci.

Average for all majors

2003-2004 4 3 1 1 2.9

2004-2005 4 3 1 1 3.0

2005-2006 5 3 1 1 3.0

2006-2007 5 3 1 1 3.0

2007-2008 5 3 1 1 3.0

2008-2009 5 3 1 1 3.0

2009-2010 5 3 1 1 3.1

2010-2011 6 3 1 1 3.1

2011-2012 6 3 1 1 3.1

Number of Required Departments for Specified Major

Results

2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 201220%

22%

24%

26%

28%

30%

32%

34%

36%

38%

40%

Average Ratio of Number of Unique Departments to Total Number of Courses Taken

Class Year

Rati

o

Note: only using departments in existence 2001-2012

Conclusion

Students have taken broader range of courses more T-shaped◦More departments to choose from◦More courses in total

Future Work

Why the increase in number of total courses?

Courses taken for GenEdGrades

Questions?