Do Public and Private Colleges Produce Different Student Outcomes?

Authors: Jenny Hoang, Helen Jiang

Course: CSE 163

Required Libraries

Install the following Python libraries before running: pip install pandas seaborn matplotlib scipy openpyxl

Data Downloads

Download the following datasets and place them in a folder called data/:

1. College Scorecard: https://collegescorecard.ed.gov/data/ Download "Most Recent Institution-Level Data" and rename to: Most-Recent-Cohorts-Institution.csv

2. Census ACS Median Income: https://data.census.gov/ Search "S1903", select all states, download CSV and rename to: Median-Income-Past-12-Months.csv

3. SHEEO State Higher Education Finance: https://shef.sheeo.org/data-downloads/ Download "2024 Report Data" and rename to: SHEEO_SHEF_FY24_Report_Data.xlsx

File Descriptions

• main.py: Cleans and prepares all three raw datasets. Run this first.
• eda.py: Performs the full analysis, generates all visualizations, and runs statistical tests.
• test_eda.py: Tests the key functions in eda.py using small hand-crafted DataFrames.

How to Run

Step 1: Download all datasets and place them in the data/ folder.

Step 2: Create an images/ folder in the project directory.

Step 3: Run the cleaning script first: python main.py

Step 4: Run the analysis script: python eda.py

Step 5: To run tests: python test_eda.py

All output images will be saved to the images/ folder.