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.

The Project Information Literacy (PIL) lifelong learning survey dataset was produced as part of a two-year federally funded study on relatively recent US college graduates and their information-seeking behavior for continued learning. The goal of the survey was to collect quantitative data about the information-seeking behavior of a sample of recent graduates—the strategies, techniques, information support systems, and best practices—used to support lifelong learning in post-college life. The dataset contains responses from 1,651 respondents to a 21-item questionnaire administered between October 9, 2014 and December 15, 2014. The voluntary sample of respondents consisted of relatively recent graduates, who had completed their degrees between 2007 and 2012, from one of 10 US colleges and universities in the institutional sample. Quantitative data are included in the dataset about the learning needs of relatively recent graduates as well as the information sources they used in three arenas of their post-college lives (i.e., personal life, workplace, and the communities in which they resided). Demographic information—including age, gender, major, GPA, employment status, graduate school attendance, and geographic proximity of current residence to their alma mater—is also included in the dataset for the respondents. "Staying Smart: How Today's Graduates Continue to Learn Once They Complete College," Alison J. Head, Project Information Literacy Research Report, Seattle: University of Washington Information School (January 5, 2016), 112 pages, 6.9 MB.

Graph and download economic data for Unemployment Rate - College Graduates - Bachelor's Degree and Higher, 25 to 34 years (CGRA2534) from Jan 2000 to Jul 2025 about 25 to 34 years, tertiary schooling, education, unemployment, rate, and USA.

The National Survey of College Graduates (NSCG) is a biennial dataset sponsored by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) and conducted by the Census Bureau since the 1970s. It captures detailed information on U.S. residents aged under 76 with at least a bachelor’s degree, focusing on demographics, employment, salaries, work activities, and educational backgrounds. The survey emphasizes graduates in science and engineering (S&E) fields, though it includes all degree holders. Its primary purpose is to provide data for policymakers, researchers, and institutions to analyze workforce trends, evaluate educational outcomes, and inform decisions on workforce development and education policy. Key features include longitudinal tracking of degree-field-occupation relationships, detailed labor market insights, and public microdata files dating back to 1993. The dataset is released every two years, with 2023 being the most recent iteration, and includes specialized tools for examining the impact of factors like the COVID-19 pandemic on career trajectories. Unique aspects include its focus on S&E workforce dynamics and granular data on salary ranges and job activities, making it a critical resource for understanding the economic contributions of college-educated professionals.

Graph and download economic data for Unemployment Rate: College Graduates: Advanced Degree: Master's Degree and Higher, 20 to 24 years, Men (CGAD2024M) from Dec 2014 to Jul 2025 about master's degree, 20 to 24 years, tertiary schooling, males, education, household survey, unemployment, rate, and USA.

In an impressive increase from years past, 39 percent of women in the United States had completed four years or more of college in 2022. This figure is up from 3.8 percent of women in 1940. A significant increase can also be seen in males, with 36.2 percent of the U.S. male population having completed four years or more of college in 2022, 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.

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 dataset is related to student data, from an educational research study focusing on student demographics, academic performance, and related factors. Here’s a general description of what each column likely represents:

Sex: The gender of the student (e.g., Male, Female). Age: The age of the student. Name: The name of the student. State: The state where the student resides or where the educational institution is located. Address: Indicates whether the student lives in an urban or rural area. Famsize: Family size category (e.g., LE3 for families with less than or equal to 3 members, GT3 for more than 3). Pstatus: Parental cohabitation status (e.g., 'T' for living together, 'A' for living apart). Medu: Mother's education level (e.g., Graduate, College). Fedu: Father's education level (similar categories to Medu). Mjob: Mother's job type. Fjob: Father's job type. Guardian: The primary guardian of the student. Math_Score: Score obtained by the student in Mathematics. Reading_Score: Score obtained by the student in Reading. Writing_Score: Score obtained by the student in Writing. Attendance_Rate: The percentage rate of the student’s attendance. Suspensions: Number of times the student has been suspended. Expulsions: Number of times the student has been expelled. Teacher_Support: Level of support the student receives from teachers (e.g., Low, Medium, High). Counseling: Indicates whether the student receives counseling services (Yes or No). Social_Worker_Visits: Number of times a social worker has visited the student. Parental_Involvement: The level of parental involvement in the student's academic life (e.g., Low, Medium, High). GPA: The student’s Grade Point Average, a standard measure of academic achievement in schools.

This dataset provides a comprehensive look at various factors that might influence a student's educational outcomes, including demographic factors, academic performance metrics, and support structures both at home and within the educational system. It can be used for statistical analysis to understand and improve student success rates, or for targeted interventions based on specific identified needs.

The Colleges and Universities feature class/shapefile is composed of all Post Secondary Education facilities as defined by the Integrated Post Secondary Education System (IPEDS, http://nces.ed.gov/ipeds/), National Center for Education Statistics (NCES, https://nces.ed.gov/), US Department of Education for the 2018-2019 school year. Included are Doctoral/Research Universities, Masters Colleges and Universities, Baccalaureate Colleges, Associates Colleges, Theological seminaries, Medical Schools and other health care professions, Schools of engineering and technology, business and management, art, music, design, Law schools, Teachers colleges, Tribal colleges, and other specialized institutions. Overall, this data layer covers all 50 states, as well as Puerto Rico and other assorted U.S. territories. This feature class contains all MEDS/MEDS+ as approved by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) Homeland Security Infrastructure Program (HSIP) Team. Complete field and attribute information is available in the ”Entities and Attributes” metadata section. Geographical coverage is depicted in the thumbnail above and detailed in the "Place Keyword" section of the metadata. This feature class does not have a relationship class but is related to Supplemental Colleges. Colleges and Universities that are not included in the NCES IPEDS data are added to the Supplemental Colleges feature class when found. This release includes the addition of 175 new records, the removal of 468 no longer reported by NCES, and modifications to the spatial location and/or attribution of 6682 records.

There were approximately 18.58 million college students in the U.S. in 2022, with around 13.49 million enrolled in public colleges and a further 5.09 million students enrolled in private colleges. The figures are projected to remain relatively constant over the next few years.

What is the most expensive college in the U.S.? The overall number of higher education institutions in the U.S. totals around 4,000, and California is the state with the most. One important factor that students – and their parents – must consider before choosing a college is cost. With annual expenses totaling almost 78,000 U.S. dollars, Harvey Mudd College in California was the most expensive college for the 2021-2022 academic year. There are three major costs of college: tuition, room, and board. The difference in on-campus and off-campus accommodation costs is often negligible, but they can change greatly depending on the college town.

The differences between public and private colleges Public colleges, also called state colleges, are mostly funded by state governments. Private colleges, on the other hand, are not funded by the government but by private donors and endowments. Typically, private institutions are  much more expensive. Public colleges tend to offer different tuition fees for students based on whether they live in-state or out-of-state, while private colleges have the same tuition cost for every student.

United States - Unemployment Rate - College Graduates - Master's Degree, 25 to 34 years, Women was 2.30% in June of 2025, according to the United States Federal Reserve. Historically, United States - Unemployment Rate - College Graduates - Master's Degree, 25 to 34 years, Women reached a record high of 7.70 in July of 2010 and a record low of 0.60 in December of 2006. Trading Economics provides the current actual value, an historical data chart and related indicators for United States - Unemployment Rate - College Graduates - Master's Degree, 25 to 34 years, Women - last updated from the United States Federal Reserve on July of 2025.

Graph and download economic data for Civilian Labor Force - College Graduates - Bachelor's Degree, 25 to 64 years, Men (CGBDLM2564) from Jan 2000 to Jul 2025 about 25 to 64 years, tertiary schooling, males, civilian, education, labor force, labor, household survey, and USA.

We know that students at elite universities tend to be from high-income families, and that graduates are more likely to end up in high-status or high-income jobs. But very little public data has been available on university admissions practices. This dataset, collected by Opportunity Insights, gives extensive detail on college application and admission rates for 139 colleges and universities across the United States, including data on the incomes of students. How do admissions practices vary by institution, and are wealthy students overrepresented?

Motivation

Education equality is one of the most contested topics in society today. It can be defined and explored in many ways, from accessible education to disabled/low-income/rural students to the cross-generational influence of doctorate degrees and tenure track positions. One aspect of equality is the institutions students attend. Consider the “Ivy Plus” universities, which are all eight Ivy League schools plus MIT, Stanford, Duke, and Chicago. Although less than half of one percent of Americans attend Ivy-Plus colleges, they account for more than 10% of Fortune 500 CEOs, a quarter of U.S. Senators, half of all Rhodes scholars, and three-fourths of Supreme Court justices appointed in the last half-century.

A 2023 study (Chetty et al, 2023) tried to understand how these elite institutions affect educational equality:

Do highly selective private colleges amplify the persistence of privilege across generations by taking students from high-income families and helping them obtain high-status, high-paying leadership positions? Conversely, to what extent could such colleges diversify the socioeconomic backgrounds of society’s leaders by changing their admissions policies?

To answer these questions, they assembled a dataset documenting the admission and attendance rate for 13 different income bins for 139 selective universities around the country. They were able to access and link not only student SAT/ACT scores and high school grades, but also parents’ income through their tax records, students’ post-college graduate school enrollment or employment (including earnings, employers, and occupations), and also for some selected colleges, their internal admission ratings for each student. This dataset covers students in the entering classes of 2010–2015, or roughly 2.4 million domestic students.

They found that children from families in the top 1% (by income) are more than twice as likely to attend an Ivy-Plus college as those from middle-class families with comparable SAT/ACT scores, and two-thirds of this gap can be attributed to higher admission rates with similar scores, with the remaining third due to the differences in rates of application and matriculation (enrollment conditional on admission). This is not a shocking conclusion, but we can further explore elite college admissions by socioeconomic status to understand the differences between elite private colleges and public flagships admission practices, and to reflect on the privilege we have here and to envision what a fairer higher education system could look like.

Data

The data has been aggregated by university and by parental income level, grouped into 13 income brackets. The income brackets are grouped by percentile relative to the US national income distribution, so for instance the 75.0 bin represents parents whose incomes are between the 70th and 80th percentile. The top two bins overlap: the 99.4 bin represents parents between the 99 and 99.9th percentiles, while the 99.5 bin represents parents in the top 1%.

Each row represents students’ admission and matriculation outcomes from one income bracket at a given university. There are 139 colleges covered in this dataset.

The variables include an array of different college-level-income-binned estimates for things including attendance rate (both raw and reweighted by SAT/ACT scores), application rate, and relative attendance rate conditional on application, also with respect to specific test score bands for each college and in/out-of state. Colleges are categorized into six tiers: Ivy Plus, other elite schools (public and private), highly selective public/private, and selective public/private, with selectivity generally in descending order. It also notes whether a college is public and/or flagship, where “flagship” means public flagship universities. Furthermore, they also report the relative application rate for each income bin within specific test bands, which are 50-point bands that had the most attendees in each school tier/category.

Several values are reported in “test-score-reweighted” form. These values control for SAT score: they are calculated separately for each SAT score value, then averaged with weights based on the distribution of SAT scores at the institution.

Note that since private schools typically don’t differentiate between in-...

Graph and download economic data for Unemployment Rate - College Graduates - Master's Degree, 16 years and over, Women (CGMD16OW) from Jan 2000 to Jul 2025 about master's degree, females, tertiary schooling, 16 years +, education, unemployment, rate, and USA.

United States - Unemployment Rate - College Graduates - Bachelor's Degree, 25 to 64 years was 2.70% in June of 2025, according to the United States Federal Reserve. Historically, United States - Unemployment Rate - College Graduates - Bachelor's Degree, 25 to 64 years reached a record high of 9.20 in April of 2020 and a record low of 1.50 in April of 2000. Trading Economics provides the current actual value, an historical data chart and related indicators for United States - Unemployment Rate - College Graduates - Bachelor's Degree, 25 to 64 years - last updated from the United States Federal Reserve on July of 2025.

United States - Unemployment Rate - College Graduates - Master's Degree, 16 years and over was 2.60% in June of 2025, according to the United States Federal Reserve. Historically, United States - Unemployment Rate - College Graduates - Master's Degree, 16 years and over reached a record high of 6.70 in April of 2020 and a record low of 1.00 in May of 2000. Trading Economics provides the current actual value, an historical data chart and related indicators for United States - Unemployment Rate - College Graduates - Master's Degree, 16 years and over - last updated from the United States Federal Reserve on July of 2025.

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 the 2020/21 school year, about 400,447 associate degrees awarded at community colleges in the United States were in liberal arts and sciences, which comprised about one third of all degrees. 171 associate degrees awarded in that same year were in the field of library science.

Graph and download economic data for Civilian Labor Force: College Graduates: Advanced Degree: Master's Degree and Higher, 16 to 17 years (CGADL1617) from May 2015 to Jul 2025 about 16 to 17 years, master's degree, tertiary schooling, civilian, education, labor force, labor, household survey, and USA.

In June 2024, about **** percent of recent college graduates were underemployed in the United States. This indicated no change from the previous month.The Federal Reserve Bank of New York defines underemployment as "working in a job that typically does not require a bachelor’s degree". Recent college graduates are those aged 22 to 27 with a bachelor's degree or higher