Higher Education

Driven by a single-year surge of 24% in Hispanic enrollment, the number of 18- to 24-year-olds attending college in the United States hit an all-time high of 12.2 million in October 2010.

The gender gap in college education is the subject of a new Pew Research Center report that includes analysis of public opinion data and of Census Bureau statistics. Women surpass men among recent college graduates, and women also have a more positive view of the value of a college education. The report includes Current Population […]

At a time when women surpass men by record numbers in college enrollment and completion, they also have a more positive view than men about the value higher education provides.

By every key measurement, college students lead the way in tech and gadget use. But community college students do not use digital tools as much as four-year college students and graduate students.

A new Pew Research Center analysis, using Census Bureau data, estimates that the typical adult with a bachelor’s degree (but no further education) will earn $1.42 million over a 40-year career, compared with $770,000 for a typical high school graduate.

College costs are rising, student debt is mounting, and most Americans say college fails to deliver good value for the money. Meantime, only 19% of college presidents say the U.S. system is the best in the world. However, more than eight-in-ten college graduates say college was a good investment for them personally.

In 2008, a 16-percentage-point gap separated marriage rates of college graduates (64%) and of those with a high school diploma or less (48%).

Graduates who received a bachelor’s degree in 2008 borrowed 50% more than their counterparts who graduated in 1996, while graduates who earned an associate’s degree or undergraduate certificate in 2008 borrowed more than twice what their counterparts in 1996 had borrowed.

Throughout the 20th century, college-educated Americans were less likely to be married by age 30 than Americans without a college degree.

In a reversal of long-standing marital patterns, college-educated young adults are more likely than young adults lacking a bachelor’s degree to have married by the age of 30.