The Chronicle of Higher Education looked for education deserts — places where people aren’t within driving range of a college or university — with a combination of Census data, school locations, and driving times. They found that about 3.5 percent of the adult population (11.2 million) lived in education deserts.
There are a lot of caveats to consider, such as not all adults go to or want to go to college and many students move away from home for school. So it’s hard to say how useful the 3.5 percent figure is. Nevertheless, it’s an interesting view of what isn’t there and the scrollytelling format lends well to working through the analysis steps.
