The electron cooling rate is experimentally investigated along the magnetic lines of a helicon plasma device operating with different magnetic nozzle shapes. Probe measurements in a 2-D region of the plasma plume outline that the polytropic index of electrons has dissimilar values along distinct streamlines ranging from gamma_e around 1.4 to gamma_e > 1.8. Accounting for ionization phenomena as an additional degree of freedom allows to predict a polytropic index smaller than the adiabatic limit. It is observed that a reduced cross-field transport can effectively reduce the electrons degrees of freedom.