What is the easiest way to compare the total number of upper-level political science courses (3000+) at UHD to the total number of such courses
I am writing a research proposal to see if UHD's limited number of upper-level political science courses is substantially lower than neighboring universities
Answer
Unfortunately, I don't think there's an easy way to gather this information. What you would need to do is to find a group of universities similar to UHD and then look at each of their catalogs to see how many upper level poli sci courses they offer. This could be a time-consuming task, since universities have this information in different locations and different formats on their sites.
To get started defining the group of universities you want to look at, you can go to the National Center for Education Statistics College Navigator at http://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/. Once you are there, look at the search area on the left of the page. Select Texas from the list of states. To get universities comparable to UHD, under “Level of Award,” check “Bachelor’s.” Under “Institution Type,” check “Public” and “4-year.” If you want to limit your group to only universities that offer a Political Science degree, click on Programs/Majors and select "Political Science and Government, General" (it's listed under Social Sciences). Then click on “Show Results.”
You should get 32 results if you limit to universities with Political Science degrees. You can use this list to guide you in which universities to look at to gather the information you need.
Unfortunately, the number of courses offered, and number of higher level courses offered, in a particular subject area at a university is a level of detail that doesn't seem to be collected by any of the statistical agencies I'm aware of. If checking all 32 universities is too time consuming, you could adopt some method to randomly sample 10 or 15 of them.