In an impressive increase from years past, 40.1 percent of women in the United States had completed four years or more of college in 2024. This figure is up from 3.8 percent of women in 1940. A significant increase can also be seen in males, with 37.1 percent of the U.S. male population having completed four years or more of college in 2024, up from 5.5 percent in 1940. 4- and 2-year colleges In the United States, college students are able to choose between attending a 2-year postsecondary program and a 4-year postsecondary program. Generally, attending a 2-year program results in an Associate’s Degree, and 4-year programs result in a Bachelor’s Degree. Many 2-year programs are designed so that attendees can transfer to a college or university offering a 4-year program upon completing their Associate’s. Completion of a 4-year program is the generally accepted standard for entry-level positions when looking for a job. Earnings after college Factors such as gender, degree achieved, and the level of postsecondary education can have an impact on employment and earnings later in life. Some Bachelor’s degrees continue to attract more male students than female, particularly in STEM fields, while liberal arts degrees such as education, languages and literatures, and communication tend to see higher female attendance. All of these factors have an impact on earnings after college, and despite nearly the same rate of attendance within the American population between males and females, men with a Bachelor’s Degree continue to have higher weekly earnings on average than their female counterparts.

College Completion Dataset

Graduation Rates, Race, Efficiency Measures and More

By Jonathan Ortiz [source]

About this dataset

This College Completion dataset provides an invaluable insight into the success and progress of college students in the United States. It contains graduation rates, race and other data to offer a comprehensive view of college completion in America. The data is sourced from two primary sources – the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES)’ Integrated Postsecondary Education System (IPEDS) and Voluntary System of Accountability’s Student Success and Progress rate.

At four-year institutions, the graduation figures come from IPEDS for first-time, full-time degree seeking students at the undergraduate level, who entered college six years earlier at four-year institutions or three years earlier at two-year institutions. Furthermore, colleges report how many students completed their program within 100 percent and 150 percent of normal time which corresponds with graduation within four years or six year respectively. Students reported as being of two or more races are included in totals but not shown separately

When analyzing race and ethnicity data NCES have classified student demographics since 2009 into seven categories; White non-Hispanic; Black non Hispanic; American Indian/ Alaskan native ; Asian/ Pacific Islander ; Unknown race or ethnicity ; Non resident with two new categorize Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander combined with Asian plus students belonging to several races. Also worth noting is that different classifications for graduate data stemming from 2008 could be due to variations in time frame examined & groupings used by particular colleges – those who can’t be identified from National Student Clearinghouse records won’t be subjected to penalty by these locations .

When it comes down to efficiency measures parameters like “Awards per 100 Full Time Undergraduate Students which includes all undergraduate completions reported by a particular institution including associate degrees & certificates less than 4 year programme will assist us here while we also take into consideration measures like expenditure categories , Pell grant percentage , endowment values , average student aid amounts & full time faculty members contributing outstandingly towards instructional research / public service initiatives .

When trying to quantify outcomes back up Median Estimated SAT score metric helps us when it is derived either on 25th percentile basis / 75th percentile basis with all these factors further qualified by identifying required criteria meeting 90% threshold when incoming students are considered for relevance . Last but not least , Average Student Aid equalizes amount granted by institution dividing same over total sum received against what was allotted that particular year .

All this analysis gives an opportunity get a holistic overview about performance , potential deficits &

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How to use the dataset

This dataset contains data on student success, graduation rates, race and gender demographics, an efficiency measure to compare colleges across states and more. It is a great source of information to help you better understand college completion and student success in the United States.

In this guide we’ll explain how to use the data so that you can find out the best colleges for students with certain characteristics or focus on your target completion rate. We’ll also provide some useful tips for getting the most out of this dataset when seeking guidance on which institutions offer the highest graduation rates or have a good reputation for success in terms of completing programs within normal timeframes.

Before getting into specifics about interpreting this dataset, it is important that you understand that each row represents information about a particular institution – such as its state affiliation, level (two-year vs four-year), control (public vs private), name and website. Each column contains various demographic information such as rate of awarding degrees compared to other institutions in its sector; race/ethnicity Makeup; full-time faculty percentage; median SAT score among first-time students; awards/grants comparison versus national average/state average - all applicable depending on institution location — and more!

When using this dataset, our suggestion is that you begin by forming a hypothesis or research question concerning student completion at a given school based upon observable characteristics like financ...

In 2022, about 37.7 percent of the U.S. population who were aged 25 and above had graduated from college or another higher education institution, a slight decline from 37.9 the previous year. However, this is a significant increase from 1960, when only 7.7 percent of the U.S. population had graduated from college. Demographics Educational attainment varies by gender, location, race, and age throughout the United States. Asian-American and Pacific Islanders had the highest level of education, on average, while Massachusetts and the District of Colombia are areas home to the highest rates of residents with a bachelor’s degree or higher. However, education levels are correlated with wealth. While public education is free up until the 12th grade, the cost of university is out of reach for many Americans, making social mobility increasingly difficult. Earnings White Americans with a professional degree earned the most money on average, compared to other educational levels and races. However, regardless of educational attainment, males typically earned far more on average compared to females. Despite the decreasing wage gap over the years in the country, it remains an issue to this day. Not only is there a large wage gap between males and females, but there is also a large income gap linked to race as well.

The National Survey of College Graduates is a repeated cross-sectional biennial survey that provides data on the nation's college graduates, with a focus on those in the science and engineering workforce. This survey is a unique source for examining the relationship of degree field and occupation in addition to other characteristics of college-educated individuals, including work activities, salary, and demographic information.

This statistic shows the share of college students in the United States who worked in 2016 while completing their undergraduates. According to the survey, ** percent of students only worked over the break periods.

The Recent College Graduates (RCG) survey estimates the potential supply of newly qualified teachers in the United States and explores the immediate post-degree employment and education experiences of individuals obtaining bachelor's or master's degrees from American colleges and universities. The RCG survey, which focuses heavily, but not exclusively, on those graduates qualified to teach at the elementary and secondary levels, is designed to meet the following objectives: (1) to determine how many graduates become eligible or qualified to teach for the first time and how many are employed as teachers in the year following graduation, by teaching field, (2) to examine the relationship between courses taken, student achievement, and occupational outcomes, and (3) to monitor unemployment rates and average salaries of graduates by field of study. The RCG survey collects information on education and employment of all graduates (date of graduation, field of study, whether newly qualified to teach, further enrollment, financial aid, employment status, and teacher employment characteristics), as well as standard demographic characteristics such as earnings, age, marital status, sex, and race/ethnicity.

Graph and download economic data for Unemployment Rate - College Graduates - Bachelor's Degree, 20 to 24 years (CGBD2024) from Jan 2000 to Sep 2025 about 20 to 24 years, tertiary schooling, education, unemployment, rate, and USA.

This graph shows a distribution of first-time postsecondary students in the United States, who started their degree at a 4-year institution in the 2003/04 academic year, by the highest level of educational attainment. The figures are also differentiated by the degree completion status of students as of 2009. For example, 55.2 percent of students, who enrolled for their bachelor's degree, had completed their degree by 2009, after starting in 2003/04.

Graph and download economic data for Unemployment Rate - College Graduates - Bachelor's Degree, 25 to 34 years (CGBD2534) from Jan 2000 to Sep 2025 about 25 to 34 years, tertiary schooling, education, unemployment, rate, and USA.

Persistence rates, graduation rates, average time to graduation and number of students in an entry cohort for undergraduate degree students, within the province or territory of first enrolment, by demographic characteristics.

Context

College tuition data is somewhat difficult to find - with many sites limiting it to online tools.

Content

The data this week comes from many different sources but originally came from the US Department of Education. The most comprehensive and easily accessible data cames from TuitionTracker.org who allows for a .csv download! Unfortunately it's in a very wide format that is not ready for analysis, but tidyr can make quick work of that with pivot_longer(). It has a massive amount of data, I have filtered it down to a few tables as seen in the attached .csv files. Tuition and diversity data can be quickly joined by dplyr::left_join(tuition_cost, diversity_school, by = c("name", "state")). Some of the other tables can also be joined but there may be some fuzzy matching needed.

Historical averages from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) - spanning the years 1985 - 2016.

• Tuition and fees by college/university for 2018-2019, along with school type, degree length, state, in-state vs out-of-state from the Chronicle of Higher Education.
• Diversity by college/university for 2014, along with school type, degree length, state, in-state vs out-of-state from the Chronicle of Higher Education.
• Example diversity graphics from Priceonomics.
• Average net cost by income bracket from TuitionTracker.org.
• Example price trend and graduation rates from TuitionTracker.org
• Salary potential data comes from payscale.com.

Acknowledgements

The data was downloaded and cleaned by Thomas Mock for #TidyTuesday during the week of March 10th, 2020. You can see the code used to clean the data in the TidyTuesday GitHub repository.

Inspiration

Use this dataset to explore the costs of college tuition in the US on their own, by geographic area, degree type, and/or salary. Whatever you choose to explore, consider sharing your notebook on Twitter using the #TidyTuesday hashtag!

License

The data provided in the TidyTuesday repository is licensed under the MIT License.

Over the five years through 2025-26, the Universities industry's revenue is expected to grow at a compound annual rate of 0.6% to £54.9 billion. The increase in tuition fees to £9,250 in 2017-18 has been an important driver of revenue growth. However, with tuition fees frozen until 2024-25, inflation, particularly in the two years through 2023-24, has meant their real value has plummeted. This has also put a strain on profit over the past five years. The cap on undergraduate student numbers in the UK was lifted in 2020-21, leading to a rise in student enrolments, which has helped prop up universities’ income.

Universities have struggled in the face of cuts to research funding levels from the government and the disruption caused by the pandemic. Teaching went online in the final term of 2019-20 and remained there for most of the 2020-21 academic year due to restrictions imposed following the COVID-19 outbreak, pushing down revenue. However, despite fears of a decline in demand, student applications for 2020-21 increased and higher education UCAS applications for 18-year-olds living in the UK for the 2025-26 academic year reached a record high. Universities are also benefitting from the UK rejoining Horizon Europe, the EU’s flagship research programme – they’ve been able to access funding since January 2024. However, there are significant concerns over declining international student numbers, as they currently prop up university finances and help subsidise domestic students' places. The introduction of the dependent ban in January 2024 on overseas students bringing family with them on their student visa for taught master's has seen applications from several countries fall. Revenue is still set to grow 1% in 2025-26 as tuition fee rises for the first time since 2017, from £9,250 to £9,535, which is propelling revenue rises despite poor enrolment figures.

Over the five years through 2030-31, university revenue is forecast to fall at a compound annual rate of 0.8% to reach £52.8 billion. Strong demand from domestic students will further support revenue growth; however, without further tuition fee rises, universities' real income is likely to suffer. The industry will need more funding intervention to prevent closures and budget cuts. Additionally, proposals by the government to make it harder for international students to settle in the UK will disincentivise international applicants, putting a strain on revenue.

In the 2021/22 academic year, about 4.1 million higher education degrees were earned in the United States. By the 2031/32 academic year, this figure is projected to increase to about 4.83 million degrees.

In 2009, 609 400 candidates obtained the National Patent Diploma (DNB), a success rate of 82.7 %, up slightly from the 2008 session. The differences in success between the departments of the metropolis remain large (15 points), but are narrowing from one session to another. Nearly nine in ten students pass the college series, which has the highest success rate (83.6 %), five out of 100 students present the technology series with a success of 82.1 %, and a little more than five out of 100 students with the lowest success rate (68 %). Girls perform better than boys (6 points) and a third of them get a good or very good mention. Social origin strongly marks patent success: the success rate thus increases from 68 % to 95 % depending on whether the student has a parent without a professional activity or executive. Similarly, the chances of getting a mention well or very well vary from one to three depending on the social environment: 44 % of the children of managers are affected, compared with only 14 % of children whose responsibility is not professional.

Statistics on postsecondary graduates, including the number of graduates, the percentage of female graduates and age at graduation, are presented by the location of residence at the time of the interview and the level of study. Estimates are available at five-year intervals.

In the academic year of 2021/22, about 835,320 male and almost 1.18 million female students earned a bachelor's degree in the United States. By the academic year of 2031/32, the number of male bachelor's degree recipients is expected to reach 975,020. Bachelor’s degrees in the United States American students typically earn a Bachelor’s degree for an undergraduate course of study and it is normally completed in four years. Depending on the major, students receive a Bachelor of Arts, Bachelor of Science, Bachelor of Business Administration, Bachelor of Fine Arts, or another type of certificate. In 2021, about 1.17 million white students earned a Bachelor's degree, followed by 324,848 Hispanic students. Bachelor's degrees and earnings When looking at the mean income of Bachelor’s degree holders in 2021, there are marked differences between the female and male Bachelor’s degree holders. Men with a Bachelor’s degree earned about 107,315 U.S. dollars per year, compared to women, who earned 77,099 U.S. dollars per year. In addition, salaries tended to increase the more educated a person was.

Graph and download economic data for Employment Level - Bachelor's Degree and Higher, 25 Yrs. & over (LNS12027662) from Jan 1992 to Sep 2025 about 25 years +, tertiary schooling, education, household survey, employment, and USA.

In the academic year 2022/23, the average student loan debt for a four-year bachelor's degree from a public college in the United States was 29,300 U.S. dollars. In comparison, student loan debt from a private for-profit college averaged almost 34,000 U.S. dollars.

Estimated gross annual earnings quartiles for postsecondary graduates working full time at the time of the interview are presented by the province of study, the level of study and gender. Estimates are available at five-year intervals.

Number of persons in the labour force (employment and unemployment) and not in the labour force, unemployment rate, participation rate, and employment rate, by educational degree, gender and age group, annual.