This statistic shows the higher education graduation rate in the United States from the 2000/01 academic year to 2016/17. The graduation rate includes all those who completed their higher education certificate or degree within 150% of normal completion time. The graduation rate has remained relatively constant over time and most recently in 2017/18 the graduation rate stood at 50 percent.

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.

In May 2024, about 4.5 percent of recent college graduates were unemployed in the United States. This was a significant decrease from September 2020, when the unemployment rate among recent college graduates was at nine percent.

The National Center for Education Statistics’ (NCES) Education Demographic and Geographic Estimate (EDGE) program develops annually updated point locations (latitude and longitude) for postsecondary institutions included in the NCES Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS). The IPEDS program annually collects information about enrollments, program completions, graduation rates, faculty and staff, finances, institutional prices, and student financial aid from every college, university, and technical and vocational institution that participates in federal student financial aid programs under the Higher Education Act of 1965 (as amended). The NCES EDGE program uses address information reported in the annually updated IPEDS directory file and collaborates with the U.S. Census Bureau’s Education Demographic, Geographic, and Economic Statistics (EDGE) Branch to develop point locations for all institutions reported in IPEDS. The point locations in this data layer were developed from the 2016-2017 IPEDS collection. For more information about NCES school point data, see: https://nces.ed.gov/programs/edge/Geographic/SchoolLocations. All information contained in this file is in the public domain. Data users are advised to review NCES program documentation and feature class metadata to understand the limitations and appropriate use of these data.

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.

This statistic depicts the percentage of high school completers who were enrolled in a 2-year or 4-year college in the fall immediately following their graduation in the U.S. in 2015, distinguished by income level. In 2016, around 82.5 percent of high school completers, with high income, enrolled in a 2-year or 4-year college in the fall immediately following their graduation from high school.

The National Center for Education Statistics’ (NCES) Education Demographic and Geographic Estimates (EDGE) program develops annually updated point locations (latitude and longitude) for postsecondary institutions included in the NCES Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS). The IPEDS program annually collects information about enrollments, program completions, graduation rates, faculty and staff, finances, institutional prices, and student financial aid from colleges, universities, and technical and vocational institutions that participate in federal student financial aid programs under the Higher Education Act of 1965 (as amended). The NCES EDGE program uses address information reported in the annually updated IPEDS directory file to develop point locations for all institutions reported in IPEDS. The point locations in this data layer represent the most current IPEDS collection available. For more information about NCES school point data, see: https://nces.ed.gov/programs/edge/Geographic/SchoolLocations. Collections are available for the following years: 2022-23 2021-22 2020-21 2019-20 2018-19 2017-18 2016-17 2015-16 All information contained in this file is in the public _domain. Data users are ad vised to review NCES program documentation and feature class metadata to understand the limitations and appropriate use of these data.

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.

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.

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.

In the academic year 2023/24, there were 331,602 international students from India studying in the United States. International students The majority of international students studying in the United States are originally from India and China, totaling 331,602 students and 277,398 students respectively in the 2023/24 school year. In 2022/23, there were 467,027 international graduate students , which accounted for over one third of the international students in the country. Typically, engineering and math & computer science programs were among the most common fields of study for these students. The United States is home to many world-renowned schools, most notably, the Ivy League Colleges which provide education that is sought after by both foreign and local students. International students and college Foreign students in the United States pay some of the highest fees in the United States, with an average of 24,914 U.S. dollars. American students attending a college in New England paid an average of 14,900 U.S. dollars for tuition alone and there were about 79,751 international students in Massachusetts . Among high-income families, U.S. students paid an average of 34,700 U.S. dollars for college, whereas the average for all U.S. families reached only 28,026 U.S. dollars. Typically, 40 percent of families paid for college tuition through parent income and savings, while 29 percent relied on grants and scholarships.

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 2023 the mean earnings of Bachelor's degree holders in the United States amounted to 86,970 U.S. dollars. People with higher education degrees tended to earn more than those without. For example, high school graduates, including those with a GED, had mean earnings of 46,720 U.S. dollars.

Colleges and universities in the United States are still a popular study destination for Chinese students, with around 277 thousand choosing to take courses there in the 2023/24 academic year. Although numbers were heavily affected by the coronavirus pandemic, China is still the leading source of international students in the U.S. education market, accounting for 24.6 percent of all incoming students. The education exodus Mathematics and computer science courses led the field in terms of what Chinese students were studying in the United States, followed by engineering and business & management programs. The vast majority of Chinese students were self-funded, wth the remainder receiving state-funding to complete their overseas studies. Tuition fees can run into the tens of thousands of U.S. dollars, as foreign students usually pay out-of-state tuition fees. What about the local situation? Although studying abroad attracts many Chinese students, the country itself boasts the largest state-run education system in the world. With modernization of the national tertiary education system being a top priority for the Chinese government, the country has seen a significant increase in the number of local universities over the last decade. Enrolments in these universities exceeded 37 million in 2023, and a record of more than ten million students graduated in the same year, indicating that China's education market is still expanding.

In the 2023/24 academic year, 29 percent of undergraduates obtaining their degree were awarded a degree with first-class honors, the highest possible grade for UK graduates. Almost half of all students achieved an upper second or 2.1, with 20 percent obtaining a lower second or 2.2, and just four percent of graduates obtained a third, the lowest possible pass grade. The share of UK students graduating with a first-class degree has increased significantly in this time period, while the share of students obtaining a 2.2 has fallen the most in the same time period. GCSE and A-Level grades also on the rise Higher grades for the UK's main qualification for high school students, the general certificate of secondary education (GCSE), have also increased recently. In 1988 for example, approximately 8.4 percent of GCSE entries received the highest grade, compared with 21.8 percent in 2024. This is also the case to a lesser-extent for advanced level GCSE results (A-Levels), with the share of entries being awarded an A or A* increasing from 17.8 percent in 2000 to 27.8 percent in 2024. There is no consensus on if these improvements are due to increased ability, or to grade inflation. During the COVID-19 pandemic, however, grades in the UK were a lot higher than in other years. This was due to teacher and tutor assessments being giving a higher weighting than normal, with exams being postponed or cancelled completely. The UK's top universities Britain's oldest and most famous universities, Cambridge and Oxford, remained the two highest-ranked universities in the UK in 2025, with the London School of Economics finishing third. According to the ranking, the University of St Andrews was the top university outside the south of England, with Durham University being the highest-ranked university in the north of England. The largest university in terms of enrolled students was the mainly remote focused Open University, which had over 140,000 students in 2022/23. Among universities that mainly taught on-campus, University College London had the most students enrolled, at almost 52,000.

In the academic year 2018/2019, Nigerian universities counted 1.8 million undergraduate students and 242 thousand postgraduate students. Among master students, women accounted for 38 percent of the total, while the female percentage among bachelor students was 44 percent.

Nigeria's largest university is the National Open University of Nigeria, which had over half million students as of 2019.