Dataset of the Day: Google search for ‘graduate programs’ remains constant despite economic hardship

July 13th, 2009by mittens

“What are you doing next?” is the most popular question I’ve been asked this past year. As a senior in college, this question, at first, was extremely stressful. However, today I can confidently respond, “I’m going to Grad school,” which I’ve noticed is a popular response amongst my peers. Furthermore, the economic crisis has elicited a plethora of reports and articles about ‘taking the next step.’ For instance, a recent article on nytimes.com, What is a Master’s Degree Worth, proved to be an extremely popular opinion article that was posted just two weeks ago. Is the answer more education?

I was curious to see if this evoked Americans to Google search graduate programs more this year than in the past five years collectively. Using GeoCommons, I uploaded the statistic of ‘Search Volume Index’ for each state—within the last year and within the past five years. Using Maker!, I mapped the difference between the two indexes; click on each state below to view the value of the difference. Just over half of the states show an increased volume index for the past year in comparison to the past five years combined. I predicted the difference would be larger within each individual state, thinking that this year would be a radical year for furthering education. Without drastic change, there cannot be any inference drawn, especially without considering other potential variables that could alter this search pattern.