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Jefferson Community and Technical College Fall 2009 Spatial Analysis of Students

6/15/2010 Jefferson Community and Technical College Vincent A. DiNoto, Jr.

Spatial Analysis of Jefferson Community and Technical College Students for Fall 2009

Figure 1 Enrollment by Census Tracts ........................................................................................................... 4 Figure 2 Enrollment for Jefferson County, KY ............................................................................................... 4 Figure 3 Enrollment Jefferson, KY without Student Locations ..................................................................... 5 Figure 4 Enrollment as a Percentage of Total 2000 Census Tract ................................................................ 5 Figure 5 Enrollment by Campus and County ................................................................................................ 6 Figure 6 Higher Education Attainment ......................................................................................................... 6 Figure 7 Median Family Income (P053001) .................................................................................................. 7 Figure 8 JCTC Students Fall 2009 - Downtown Campus ................................................................................ 7 Figure 9 JCTC Students Fall 2009 - Southwest Campus ................................................................................ 8 Figure 10 JCTC Students Fall 2009 - Bullitt Campus ...................................................................................... 8 Figure 11 JCTC Students Fall 2009 - Carrollton Campus ............................................................................... 9 Figure 12 JCTC Students Fall 2009 – Shelby County Campus ........................................................................ 9 Figure 13 JCTC Students Fall 2009 - Tech Campus ...................................................................................... 10 Figure 14 Remedial Students shown as a percentage against total student population by Census Tracts 10 Figure 15 Median Income 2000 Census, with location of Remedial Students ........................................... 11 Figure 16 Percentage of Remedial Students as Compared to Total Student Population by County .......... 11 Figure 17 Remedial Student Density ........................................................................................................... 12 Figure 18 Remedial Clusters and 2000 Census Median Income ................................................................. 12 Figure 19 HIgher Education Attainment with Remedial Student Clusters .................................................. 13 Figure 20 Student Population Density ........................................................................................................ 13 Figure 21 Oldham County, KY ..................................................................................................................... 15


Jefferson Community and Technical College – Fall 2009 Spatial Analysis of Students The Jefferson Office of Institutional Research provided data on fall of 2009 enrollment and also students who were enrolled in remedial (developmental classes). The student addresses were provided but any other identifiable information was not received or requested.

The initial task was to graphically represent the residential location for each student who was enrolled at Jefferson during the target semester, the results were geocoded against the ESRI Street Map at an 83% level with 1% tying which were also displayed, a total of 12,237 out of a total of 14,549 potential students were geographically referenced. A higher percentage of spatial representation could be possible by lowering the threshold percentage or manually matching student addresses. The largest problems resulted from student records having post office boxes, apartment numbers and non-existing roads, as well as typographic errors making coding impossible for a first analysis. A slightly higher percentage was obtained for students enrolled in developmental classes with 85% of the students geocoded and 1 % tying for a total of 2,858 displayed out of a possible 3,328 students. Upon initial observational review it was determined that most of the students lived near the Louisville area, so those students outside of Kentucky and those outside the following Kentucky and Indiana counties were eliminated from the study for Kentucky: Meade, Hardin, Bullitt, Nelson, Spencer, Jefferson, Shelby, Anderson, Franklin, Henry, Oldham, Owens, Carroll, Gallatin and Trimble and in Indiana: Harrison, Washington, Floyd, Clark, Scott, and Jefferson. Note Crawford and Switzerland counties in Indiana are displayed for the purpose of completeness, but not include in the analysis.

It is important to note that the student data was from the fall of 2009 and the United States Census data was obtained in 2000. While the census information is somewhat dated it can show very important trends which are in general still valid. Note all maps are placed in an appendix so additional detail can be observed and can also be downloaded in a printer friendly format.


Figure 1 Enrollment by Census Tracts

The initial analysis was to determine the number of students who lived within each 2000 Census tract; this was accomplished by doing a spatial join of the data with the geographical boundaries of each census tract1

Figure 2 Enrollment for Jefferson County, KY

. Each dot represents the location of an individual student; if more than one student resides at the same address they will be

plotted on top of one another and cannot be individually discerned. Students residing in Jefferson County are grouped such that it is impossible to determine any information for the county due to sheer numbers of displayed points. Most of the census tracts in the remaining counties are visible. The small numbers in each census tract represents the number of students living within that geographic boundary.

This map represents the location of the students living within Jefferson County, KY. The numbers represent the number students within each census tract. The census tracts are color coded by number of people residing in the census tract2

1 A Census track is completely contained within a county and sub-divided into blocks and block groups. Census tracts have different populations and sizes.

. Near the Center of the map there appears a fairly open area, which includes the Kentucky

Fairgrounds, Louisville International Airport and the Outer Loop Landfill, this area may today actually have less people than 2000 because of airport relocation programs.

2 This information is census attribute P001001, which represents people of any age.


Figure 3 Enrollment Jefferson, KY without Student Locations

This map removes the student locations and just shows the census population represented by color and the numbers contained within each tract representing the student population. The number of students attending JCTC per Census tract is not uniform.

Figure 4 Enrollment as a Percentage of Total 2000 Census Tract

The map shows percentage of people enrolled in the college verses the total population of the census tract. The P001001 data set represents total population which includes those who are not college age. Only those census tracts with at least 10 students are

represented. The deepest red color shows where the penetration of students attending JCTC is the highest, representing over 2% of the total population enrolled in the college.


Figure 5 Enrollment by Campus and County

This map shows the total number of students attending Jefferson by county. The individual students are color coded to designate what campus the students consider as their home campus. The largest number of students attending JCTC resides in Jefferson County, KY as would

be expected3. Bullitt, Oldham and Shelby counties of Kentucky represent the next largest concentration of students4. Significant numbers of students reside in Clark and Floyd counties of Indiana and Trimble, Carroll, Henry, Spencer and Nelson counties of Kentucky5

Figure 6 Higher Education Attainment

. Each campus of Jefferson will be analyzed in this report as to the location of their student populations.

This map shows information contained within the 2000 Census in attribute P037xxx6

3 Jefferson is the largest county in the state of Kentucky and Jefferson has its three largest campuses within the county.

. For this study higher education attainment is defined as any

4 Between 201 and 1000 students 5 Between 76 and 200 students 6 P0037xxx is educational levels of people at least 25 years of age. Numerous attributes for males and females have been summed and divided by the total population, 25 and older for each tract.


person who has ever enrolled in a college to those that have obtained terminal degrees. The largest concentration of people meeting this criterion is in eastern Jefferson County, western Oldham County and northern Hardin County.

Figure 7 Median Family Income (P053001)

This map represents the median income of families based on the 2000 US Census, attribute P053001.7

Figure 8 JCTC Students Fall 2009 - Downtown Campus

It is a representative of a trend and not specific income levels. The lowest incomes are found in the north central and north west parts of Jefferson County, KY and some small areas of southern Clark and

Floyd counties of Indiana. The highest incomes are in eastern Jefferson and western Oldham counties of Kentucky.

This map represents the locations of student which name the Downtown Campus of JCTC as their home campus. The density of students in Jefferson county makes it impossible to determine individual student locations. Most of the students

7 Note this is based on 1999 dollars and thus does not reflect the inflation which has occurred during the past 10 years.


attending this campus live in Jefferson County, KY or southern Indiana, but students do live in many other counties.

Figure 9 JCTC Students Fall 2009 - Southwest Campus

The Southwest campus is the second largest of Jefferson’s six campuses and is located in the southwest corner of Jefferson County, KY. Most of the students that attend Southwest live in Jefferson County or in northern Bullitt County and are a bit more regionalized.

Figure 10 JCTC Students Fall 2009 - Bullitt Campus

The Bullitt County campus is the newest of JCTC. It currently is located in temporary facilities. Most of the students attending this campus live in Bullitt County.


Figure 11 JCTC Students Fall 2009 - Carrollton Campus

The Carrollton Campus has the second largest mean linear distance that students live away from campus. As can be seen on the map, many of the students live in Oldham County that attends this campus (175 students).

Figure 12 JCTC Students Fall 2009 – Shelby County Campus

The Shelby County Campus has students coming from many different counties; the majority of the students live in Shelby and Oldham Counties.


Figure 13 JCTC Students Fall 2009 - Tech Campus

Tech Campus has the farthest reach of all of the campuses of Jefferson. The majority of the students do live within Jefferson County, but students come from many of the surrounding counties including many from southern Indiana. This most likely is due to the

uniqueness of the offerings.

Figure 14 Remedial Students shown as a percentage against total student population by Census Tracts

The figure below shows the location of students who took remedial classes during the fall of 2009. While this does not represent all the students who may need to take remediation it is a snapshot of students who were enrolled.

The areas which had the largest percentage of the students enrolling in remedial classes appears to be the northwestern part of Jefferson County, this is hard to determine because the student home location obscuring the color coded data. A threshold of at least 10 students was included so that erroneous data was excluded.


Figure 15 Median Income 2000 Census, with location of Remedial Students

A large number of remedial students live in census tracts that are of the lowest income levels within Jefferson County and those in higher income census tracts appear to require less remediation, but few total students attend JCTC from the higher

income levels census tracts as compared with the numbers attending from the lower income levels census tracts.

Figure 16 Percentage of Remedial Students as Compared to Total Student Population by County

The number of students enrolled by and the number students enrolled in remedial classes was determined for each county. Only counties with more than 10 remedial students were plotted in this analysis. Remedial

student home location is displayed by campus they attend. The percentage was determined by dividing the total number of students in remedial classes by the total number of students attending the college by county. From this determination we can see that two Kentucky counties and two in Indiana have the highest percentage of students enrolled in remedial classes (Clark, Floyd in Indiana and Jefferson and Carroll in Kentucky). Nelson and Oldham counties of Kentucky had the lowest percentage of students in


remedial classes, about half the percentage as compared to those counties with the greatest percentage of remedial students. This is a review of only one semester and the number of students in each county has a wide variation, which could potential effect the results in future semesters.

Figure 17 Remedial Student Density

A cluster analysis was done to see if there are natural clusters of students needing remediation. One primary cluster can be seen in Jefferson County. Lesser clusters can be seen in Jefferson, Bullitt, Shelby, Carroll and Oldham Counties. The cluster density in northwestern

Jefferson County has more than 70 students needing remediation per square mile.

Figure 18 Remedial Clusters and 2000 Census Median Income

A query was performed on the P053001 Census attribute to display only the Census tracts in which the median income is less than $32,000 based on 1999 dollars. Displayed on the map is both the median income query as well as the remedial cluster pattern. The

two major clusters in Jefferson County have very low incomes, as you can see with the overlaid census tracts. While not every location with low incomes have clusters of students needing remediation or


every remediation cluster have low income. It is significant that the two largest clusters (by population density and area) are in the lowest income census tracts.

Figure 19 HIgher Education Attainment with Remedial Student Clusters

Within the region there are lots of areas that have less than 35% of the population over the age of 25 that has ever attended college. The area of greatest population density of students enrolled in remedial courses in the region is also an area of low

college attainment. But the degree of correlation of low college attainment and remediation is not directly correlated from the data available.8

Figure 20 Student Population Density

This map is a study of total student population density during the fall of 2009. The data is viewed in a cluster analysis. There are several clusters of students, mainly in Jefferson, Shelby, Bullitt, Oldham and Carroll counties. Jefferson County has two major clusters

8 College attainment is defined as those males and females that have attended college to those which have received terminal degrees


one in the central part of the county and the other in the western part of the county. There is a cluster of students in northern Bullitt county, Shelbyville in Shelby county appears to be a cluster of students, as well as the Carrollton are in Carroll county. Another cluster of students is in central Oldham County. Contained on the map is the location of the six campuses of JCTC. There appears to be two or three major areas of clustering of students which are a fair distance from one campus, these being central Jefferson County, northeastern Bullitt County and Oldham County.

Spider diagrams were constructed for each of the six Jefferson campuses. Each line represents the linear distance that each student is away from the campus which they indicated as their home campus. The lines complete blend together as you get close to each campus location. The campus locations are


plotted on each map, at this scale the Downtown and Tech Campuses are nearly on top of each other. While it is clear that these linear distances are not road distance it is a good indication of the distance students are away from each of the college campuses.

Campus Carrollton Southwest Downtown Shelbyville Tech Bullitt

Mean Distance (Mi) 15.57634 9.679803 9.767295 10.93836 14.16598

7.44096

Standard Deviation of Mean (Mi) 10.60654 7.665831 7.954665 8.407305 11.11818 4.356453

The mean distance is determined by taking the length of each line from student to campus. The standard deviation of the mean distance is an indication of the variation in the travel distances. The greater the variation in travel distances the more diverse the population attending a campus. The college has four campuses in which the mean linear distance is less than 11 miles and the standard deviations are the smallest of the six campuses. The Tech and the Carrollton campuses have the largest mean linear distances and the greatest standard deviation.

Figure 21 Oldham County, KY

The analysis of the cluster data, spider diagrams and location students, show a significant population of students living in Oldham County, KY. Students living in Oldham County attend five of the six JCTC campuses (none attend Bullitt County Campus). The

Oldham County map displays the location of the student, major geographical features, and classifies the students by their home campus.

While this study is seen as a single snapshot in time and not meant to be a conclusive study. Conclusions drawn from this information is meant to only lead to addition study of multiple semesters to determine the accuracy of those statements. It is also recognized that students take classes on


multiple campuses and also online, while declaring a specific campus as their home campus. It also should be noted ethnic, racial, and gender was not considered in this study but may influence the conclusion drawn. Urban and Rural influences were also not studies in this report.

Observed Conclusions:

• Students attending JCTC come from a diverse background and the service area is extremely diverse.

• The student population of Jefferson does have natural clustering of locations, which are determined by many factors including social, geographical and economic factors.

• That students enrolled in remedial classes also have natural clusters and median income appears to be a factor.

• That Oldham County has a significant number of students attending JCTC.

• The college does not have a uniform population from each census tract, there are many factors that influence such a determination with some of those being the average age of the population of the census tract, geographical distances from a campus and income levels.

• The census tracts show a considerable diversity in education attainment and median income levels according to the 2000 Census.

• The percentage of the students enrolled in remedial classes in the fall of 2009 is geographically diverse, while there are some natural clusters.

• Income levels appear to correlate with students enrolled in remediation.

• College attainment levels appear to be less of a factor on the geographical distribution of students enrolled in remediation.

• Carrollton and Tech Campus have students traveling larger distance to obtain their education than the other campuses of the college.

• Oldham County has a large number of students attending different college campuses this wide diversity of student campus is most significant in Oldham County, because students call five of the six campuses home and the size of the student population coming from Oldham; the students in Oldham County compose a natural cluster.

• Central Jefferson County has a significant cluster of students, while there distance from the Downtown and Tech Campuses is not large, there is a fairly high student population density.


Appendix Maps

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