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The University of California ClioMetric History Project and Formatted Optical Character Recognition

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  • Bleemer, Zachary

Abstract

In what ways—and to what degree—have universities contributed to the long-run growth, health, economic mobility, and gender/ethnic equity of their students’ communities and home states? The University of California ClioMetric History Project (UC-CHP), based at the Center for Studies in Higher Education, extends prior research on this question in two ways. First, we have developed a novel digitization protocol—formatted optical character recognition (fOCR)—which transforms scanned structured and semi-structured texts like university directories and catalogs into high-quality computer-readable databases. We use fOCR to produce annual databases of students (1890s to 1940s), faculty (1900 to present), course descriptions (1900 to present), and detailed budgets (1911-2012) for many California universities. Digitized student records, for example, illuminate the high proportion of 1900s university students who were female and from rural areas, as well as large family income differences between male and female students and between students at public and private universities. Second, UC-CHP is working to photograph, process with fOCR, and analyze restricted student administrative records to construct a comprehensive database of California university students and their enrollment behavior. This paper describes UC-CHP’s methodology and provides technical documentation for the project, while also presenting examples of the range of data the project is exploring and prospects for future research.

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  • Bleemer, Zachary, 2018. "The University of California ClioMetric History Project and Formatted Optical Character Recognition," University of California at Berkeley, Center for Studies in Higher Education qt1xp6g8nj, Center for Studies in Higher Education, UC Berkeley.
    • Handle: RePEc:cdl:cshedu:qt1xp6g8nj
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    1. Raj Chetty & John N. Friedman & Emmanuel Saez & Nicholas Turner & Danny Yagan, 2017. "Mobility Report Cards: The Role of Colleges in Intergenerational Mobility," Working Papers 2017-059, Human Capital and Economic Opportunity Working Group.
    2. Bleemer, Zachary, 2016. "Role Model Effects Of Female Stem Teachers And Doctors On Early 20th Century University Enrollment In California," University of California at Berkeley, Center for Studies in Higher Education qt8nq0z4wb, Center for Studies in Higher Education, UC Berkeley.
    3. Matthew Gentzkow & Jesse Shapiro & Matt Taddy, 2016. "Measuring Polarization in High-Dimensional Data: Method and Application to Congressional Speech," Working Papers id:11114, eSocialSciences.
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    Cited by:

    1. Bleemer , Zachary & Mehta, Aashish, 2021. "College Major Restrictions and Student Stratification," University of California at Berkeley, Center for Studies in Higher Education qt513249vg, Center for Studies in Higher Education, UC Berkeley.
    2. Bleemer, Zachary, 2024. "How Helpful Are Average Wage-By-Major Statistics In Choosing A Field Of Study?," University of California at Berkeley, Center for Studies in Higher Education qt0pf717bh, Center for Studies in Higher Education, UC Berkeley.

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    Keywords

    Education; Social and Behavioral Sciences; History of Higher Education; Big Data; Natural Language Processing; University of California;
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