In the academic year of 2021/22, almost 2.02 million students were awarded a Bachelor's degree in the United States. This figure is expected to increase to the academic year of 2031/32, when about 2.46 million students are forecasted to be awarded a Bachelor's degree.

There were 342,875 international students studying at the undergraduate level in the United States in the 2023/24 academic year. In that same year, there were 502,291 international graduate students studying in the country and a further 38,742 non-degree-seeking international students.

The dataset contains Academic-year-wise historically compiled data on the total number of International Students who have enrolled in Undergraduate, Graduate, Non-Degree and Optional Practical Training (OPT) courses in the United States of America (USA). The time period of data availability is every five years for the period from 1954-55 to 1979-80 and every year from the year 1979-80 onwards.

The New York State calculation method was first adopted for the Cohort of 2001 (Class 2005). The cohort consists of al students who first entered 9th grade in a given school year (e.g., the cohort of 2006 entered 9th grade in 2006-2007 school year). Graduates are defined as those students earning either a local or regents diploma and exclude those earning either a special education (IEP) diploma for GED. In order to comply with FERPA regulations on public reporting of education outcomes, rows with a cohort of 20 or fewer students are suppressed. Due to small number of students identified as Native American or Multi-Racial these ethnicities are not reported on the Ethnicity tab, however these students are included in the counts on all other tabs.

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 contains Academic-year-wise historically compiled data on the total number of Indian students who enrolled for Undergraduate, Graduate, Non-Degree and Optional Practical Training (OPT) courses in the United States of America (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.

This study includes the federal graduation rate for all NCAA member institutions who participated in Division I or Division II sports. It also describes the Graduation Success Rate (GSR) for all Division I institutions and the Academic Success Rate (ASR) of all Division II institutions. The rates included in this study are based on championship sport student-athletes who first began their full-time postsecondary education in academic years 1995-96 through 2008-09.Each cohort was tracked for 6 years for college completion. For example, the graduation status for the latest cohort (2008-09 cohort) was tracked through the spring of 2014. At their core, all three measures are based on a comparison of the number of students who entered a college or university in a given year and the number of those who graduated within six years of their initial enrollment, though each measure has a slightly different cohort definition. Federal graduation rates are based on the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System Graduation Rates (IPEDS-GRS) which is defined as a six-year proportion of those student-athletes who graduated versus those who entered an institution on institutional aid. Federal graduation rates are included for both an institution's student-athletes and its general student body. In addition to the student-athlete data in the graduation-rates data, the Division I Graduation Success Rate (GSR) accounts for student-athletes who transfer into an institution while discounting student-athletes who separate from the institution and would have been academically eligible to compete had they returned. The definition of the Division II Academic Success Rate (ASR) cohort is identical to that of the GSR with the exception that it also includes freshmen who did not receive athletics aid, but did participate in athletics.

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.

The U.S. currently enjoys a position among the world’s foremost innovative and scientifically advanced economies but the emergence of new economic powerhouses like China and India threatens to disrupt the global distribution of innovation and economic competitiveness. Among U.S. policy makers, the promotion of advanced education, particularly in the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) fields, has become a key strategy for ensuring the U.S.’s position as an innovative economic leader. Since approximately one third of science and engineering post-graduate students in the U.S. are foreign born, the future of the U.S. STEM educational system is intimately tied to issues of global competitiveness and American immigration policy. This study utilizes a combination of national education data, a survey of foreign-born STEM graduate students, and in-depth interviews of a sub-set of those students to explain how a combination of scientists’ and engineers’ educational decisions, as well as their experience in school, can predict a students’ career path and geographical location, which can affect the long-term innovation environment in their home and destination country. This study highlights the fact that the increasing global competitiveness in STEM education and the complex, restrictive nature of U.S. immigration policies are contributing to an environment where the American STEM system may no longer be able to comfortably remain the premier destination for the world’s top international students.

The New York State calculation method was first adopted for the Cohort of 2001 (Class 2005). The cohort consists of al students who first entered 9th grade in a given school year (e.g., the cohort of 2006 entered 9th grade in 2006-2007 school year). Graduates are defined as those students earning either a local or regents diploma and exclude those earning either a special education (IEP) diploma for GED. In order to comply with FERPA regulations on public reporting of education outcomes, rows with a cohort of 20 or fewer students are suppressed. Due to small number of students identified as Native American or Multi-Racial these ethnicities are not reported on the Ethnicity tab, however these students are included in the counts on all other tabs.

The International STEM Graduate Student Survey assesses why international students are coming to the United States for their graduate studies, the challenges they have faced while studying in the US, their future career plans, and whether they wish to stay or leave the US upon graduation. According to the Survey of Earned Doctorates by the National Science Foundation and the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics, international students accounted for over 40% of all US doctoral graduates in STEM in 2013. The factors that influence international students' decisions to study in the US and whether they will stay or leave are important to US economic competitiveness. We contacted graduate students (both domestic and international) in STEM disciplines from the top 10 universities ranked by the total number of enrolled international students. We estimate that we contacted approximately 15,990 students. Individuals were asked to taken an online survey regarding their background, reasons for studying in the US, and whether they plan to stay or leave the US upon graduation. We received a total of 2,322 completed surveys, giving us a response rate of 14.5%. 1,535 of the completed were from domestic students and 787 of which were from international students. Raw survey data are presented here.Survey participants were contacted via Qualtrics to participate in this survey. The Universe of this survey data set pertains to all graduate students (Master's and PhD) in STEM disciplines from the following universities: Columbia University, University of Illinois-Urbana Champaign, Michigan State University, Northeastern University, Purdue University, University of Southern California, Arizona State University, University of California at Los Angeles, New York University, University of Washington at Seattle. Data are broken into 2 subsets: one for international STEM graduate students and one for domestic STEM graduate students, please see respective files.

Graph and download economic data for People 25 Years and Over Who Have Completed a Graduate or Professional Degree for California (GCT1503CA) from 2006 to 2023 about advanced degree, educational attainment, 25 years +, education, CA, and USA.

Graph and download economic data for People 25 Years and Over Who Have Completed a Graduate or Professional Degree for Oregon (GCT1503OR) from 2006 to 2023 about advanced degree, educational attainment, OR, 25 years +, education, and USA.

The dataset contains Academic-year-wise compiled data on number of newly enrolled International Students in the United States of America (U.S.A) for pursuing Under Graduate, Graduate and Non-Degree studies.

The New York State calculation method consists of all students who first entered 9th grade in a given school year (e.g., the Cohort of 2006 entered 9th grade in the 2006-2007 school. In order to comply with the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) regulations on public reporting of education outcomes, rows with fewer than 5 students are suppressed, and replaced with an "s" and for "Transfer School" tab rows with cohorts of 10 or fewer students are suppressed. As of January 1, 2014, the GED test is no longer offered in New York State. The GED has been replaced by the TASC (Test Assessing Secondary Completion) exam which will continue to lead students to a High School Equivalency (HSE) Diploma.

The Graduate Students and Postdoctorates in Science and Engineering survey is an annual census of all U.S. academic institutions granting research-based master's degrees or doctorates in science, engineering, and selected health fields as of fall of the survey year. The survey, sponsored by the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics within the National Science Foundation and by the National Institutes of Health, collects the total number of master's and doctoral students, postdoctoral appointees, and doctorate-level nonfaculty researchers by demographic and other characteristics such as source of financial support. Results are used to assess shifts in graduate enrollment and postdoc appointments and trends in financial support.

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.

United States - Unemployment Rate - College Graduates - Doctoral Degree, 25 years and over was 2.60% in July of 2025, according to the United States Federal Reserve. Historically, United States - Unemployment Rate - College Graduates - Doctoral Degree, 25 years and over reached a record high of 4.50 in June of 2020 and a record low of 0.30 in February of 2001. Trading Economics provides the current actual value, an historical data chart and related indicators for United States - Unemployment Rate - College Graduates - Doctoral Degree, 25 years and over - last updated from the United States Federal Reserve on September of 2025.

Overall educational attainment measures the highest level of education attained by a given individual: for example, an individual counted in the percentage of the measured population with a master’s or professional degree can be assumed to also have a bachelor’s degree and a high school diploma, but they are not counted in the population percentages for those two categories. Overall educational attainment is the broadest education indicator available, providing information about the measured county population as a whole.

Only members of the population aged 25 and older are included in these educational attainment estimates, sourced from the U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey (ACS).

Champaign County has high educational attainment: over 48 percent of the county's population aged 25 or older has a bachelor's degree or graduate or professional degree as their highest level of education. In comparison, the percentage of the population aged 25 or older in the United States and Illinois with a bachelor's degree in 2023 was 21.8% (+/-0.1) and 22.8% (+/-0.2), respectively. The population aged 25 or older in the U.S. and Illinois with a graduate or professional degree in 2022, respectively, was 14.3% (+/-0.1) and 15.5% (+/-0.2).

Educational attainment data was sourced from the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey 1-Year Estimates, which are released annually.

As with any datasets that are estimates rather than exact counts, it is important to take into account the margins of error (listed in the column beside each figure) when drawing conclusions from the data.

Due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, instead of providing the standard 1-year data products, the Census Bureau released experimental estimates from the 1-year data in 2020. This includes a limited number of data tables for the nation, states, and the District of Columbia. The Census Bureau states that the 2020 ACS 1-year experimental tables use an experimental estimation methodology and should not be compared with other ACS data. For these reasons, and because data is not available for Champaign County, no data for 2020 is included in this Indicator.

For interested data users, the 2020 ACS 1-Year Experimental data release includes a dataset on Educational Attainment for the Population 25 Years and Over.

Sources: U.S. Census Bureau; American Community Survey, 2023 American Community Survey 1-Year Estimates, Table S1501; generated by CCRPC staff; using data.census.gov; (16 October 2024).; U.S. Census Bureau; American Community Survey, 2022 American Community Survey 1-Year Estimates, Table S1501; generated by CCRPC staff; using data.census.gov; (29 September 2023).; U.S. Census Bureau; American Community Survey, 2021 American Community Survey 1-Year Estimates, Table S1501; generated by CCRPC staff; using data.census.gov; (6 October 2022).; U.S. Census Bureau; American Community Survey, 2019 American Community Survey 1-Year Estimates, Table S1501; generated by CCRPC staff; using data.census.gov; (4 June 2021).; U.S. Census Bureau; American Community Survey, 2018 American Community Survey 1-Year Estimates, Table S1501; generated by CCRPC staff; using data.census.gov; (4 June 2021).; U.S. Census Bureau; American Community Survey, 2017 American Community Survey 1-Year Estimates, Table S1501; generated by CCRPC staff; using American FactFinder; (13 September 2018).; U.S. Census Bureau; American Community Survey, 2016 American Community Survey 1-Year Estimates, Table S1501; generated by CCRPC staff; using American FactFinder; (13 September 2018). U.S. Census Bureau; American Community Survey, 2015 American Community Survey 1-Year Estimates, Table S1501; generated by CCRPC staff; using American FactFinder; (19 September 2016).; U.S. Census Bureau; American Community Survey, 2014 American Community Survey 1-Year Estimates, Table S1501; generated by CCRPC staff; using American FactFinder; (16 March 2016).; U.S. Census Bureau; American Community Survey, 2013 American Community Survey 1-Year Estimates, Table S1501; generated by CCRPC staff; using American FactFinder; (16 March 2016).; U.S. Census Bureau; American Community Survey, 2012 American Community Survey 1-Year Estimates, Table S1501; generated by CCRPC staff; using American FactFinder; (16 March 2016).; U.S. Census Bureau; American Community Survey, 2011 American Community Survey 1-Year Estimates, Table S1501; generated by CCRPC staff; using American FactFinder; (16 March 2016).; U.S. Census Bureau; American Community Survey, 2010 American Community Survey 1-Year Estimates, Table S1501; generated by CCRPC staff; using American FactFinder; (16 March 2016).; U.S. Census Bureau; American Community Survey, 2009 American Community Survey 1-Year Estimates, Table S1501; generated by CCRPC staff; using American FactFinder; (16 March 2016).; U.S. Census Bureau; American Community Survey, 2008 American Community Survey 1-Year Estimates, Table S1501; generated by CCRPC staff; using American FactFinder; (16 March 2016).; U.S. Census Bureau; American Community Survey, 2007 American Community Survey 1-Year Estimates, Table S1501; generated by CCRPC staff; using American FactFinder; (16 March 2016).; U.S. Census Bureau; American Community Survey, 2006 American Community Survey 1-Year Estimates, Table S1501; generated by CCRPC staff; using American FactFinder; (16 March 2016).; U.S. Census Bureau; American Community Survey, 2005 American Community Survey 1-Year Estimates, Table S1501; generated by CCRPC staff; using American FactFinder; (16 March 2016).