For-profit Education Lobbying Data

[Ijaz Ahmad]

Hi, my name is Ijaz Ahmad. I'm PhD student at the University of Georgia's Louise McBee Institute of Higher Education. I am seeking assistance with utilizing Education Lobbyists' expenditure data from 2004 to 2023 for my doctoral research. I am encountering two primary challenges that I hope you can help me address.

First, although I have downloaded bulk data, I don't know how to extract the required data from text files because I have no knowledge of Python or API development. Therefore, I want to use Education Industry Lobbying data from the following link: 

Education Lobbying Profile • OpenSecrets  

However, I was unable to locate the For-profit Education data under the link above. I have found the biennial for-profit education lobbying data on another page, given below, but I assume the nature of this data is different from the data given under the first hyperlink above. 

For-profit Education Lobbying • OpenSecrets

Second, once I have compiled lobbying data for both for-profit and public/non-profit education industries, I intend to aggregate it at the state level to estimate lobbying expenditure across each state. Unfortunately, the state affiliations of lobbying organizations are not included in the OpenSecrets dataset. 

Any advice would be highly appreciated. 

Ijaz 

  

[dau...@opensecrets.org]

Hello Ijaz,

The second link going to For-Profit Education specifically is accurate and does not overlap with the first one (Education). However, it is limited to for profit colleges and universities. If you also want to include for-profit K-12, child care, and education technology companies, the following link is more inclusive.   https://www.opensecrets.org/federal-lobbying/industries/summary?cycle=2023&id=W08&t0-search=school

The bulk data does have state information for lobbying clients. It is worth noting though that it will tend to overweight DC, MD and VA as organizations often use the address of their Washington, DC area office rather than the corporate headquarters. OpenSecrets does very limited work that attempts to keep the state value consistent and will update it if we find they are really based somewhere else.

If bulk data is not working for you, please get in touch with me directly and we can talk about a custom data set that meets your needs.

Best,

Dan Auble

Senior Researcher