PNPI Explorer Blog – U.S. Territories
Welcome back to the PNPI Explorer blog series, where we examine higher education data in different states and the U.S. territories. This week’s post is a special edition focusing on the U.S. territories.
First, let’s examine the number of institutions and full-time equivalent (FTE) students in each of the five territories. American Samoa has 1 institution serving 880 FTE students, Guam has 3 institutions serving 3,743 FTE students, the Northern Mariana Islands have 1 institution serving 1,130 FTE students, and the U.S. Virgin Islands have 1 institution serving 1,212 FTE students. Puerto Rico is different in terms of scale, with 82 institutions serving 140,750 FTE students.
When a U.S. territory is selected, the Explorer’s Comparison Tool will show all five territories for a given metric as well as a national estimate. Using Puerto Rico as our selected territory, we can examine how their institutions compare to other territories and nationally for average net price of attendance. Puerto Rico has an average net price of $8.4K, making it the second highest of all the territories but still less than half of the national average net price of $15.7K.
We can also examine the Median Student Debt of students who attended institutions in the U.S. territories. Changing our selected territory to Guam, we can see that while students in the U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico have median debt levels well below the national estimate, students in Guam have slightly higher median debt, $12.5K compared to $12.2K.
We can also see that institutions at American Samoa and the Northern Mariana Islands do not have student debt information. This is due to the small sample sizes at their institutions for students in the student loan borrower cohorts, resulting in the College Scorecard suppressing their data for privacy purposes. When you hover over one of the missing bars, it shows that their data are not reported. There is further information on data reporting in the Explorer’s FAQ and in the methodology report.
Find something interesting about the U.S. Territories that you would like to share with us? Drop us a note via our feedback page or discuss your findings on LinkedIn! Check back next week when we return to our survey of the states with Iowa.
