Almost 2 percent of Americans have a doctoral degree, and 1.5 percent have earned a professional degree that requires study beyond a four-year bachelor's course. Younger Americans are more likely to have attained a four-year degree than older groups.
From 2010 to 2019, the percentage of people age 25 and older with a bachelor's degree or higher jumped from 29.9% to 36.0%.
In 2010, the world population aged 15 and over had an average 7.8 years of schooling, increasing steadily from 3.2 years in 1950 and 5.3 years in 1980. The rise in average years of schooling from 1950 to 2010 was from 6.2 to 11.0 years in high-income countries and from 2.1 to 7.1 years in low-income countries.
For the First Time, 90 Percent Completed High School or More. For the first time, the percentage of the American population age 25 and older that completed high school or higher levels of education reached 90 percent in 2017.
The 150 percent graduation rate was highest for Asian students (36 percent), followed by Pacific Islander students (34 percent), White students (32 percent), Hispanic students (30 percent), American Indian/Alaska Native students (27 percent), students of Two or more races (25 percent), and Black students (23 percent).
The percentage of Black students increased from 10 percent in 1976 to 14 percent in 2017, but the 2017 percentage reflects a decrease since 2011, when Black students made up 15 percent of all enrolled U.S. residents.
Degrees are still a requirement for most jobs, which makes earning your bachelor's a valuable step in preparing for almost any career. But that degree just doesn't make your resume jump out at potential employers like it would have 50 years ago. A bachelor's degree is not an automatic hall pass into grown-up land.
Best Education Systems in the WorldIn 2020, the top three educational systems in the world were Finland, Denmark, and South Korea.
Among the individual categories, the United States ranked second in economic dynamism (behind Singapore), ninth in quality of life, fourteenth in political environment, twenty-sixth in health, and twenty-sixth in education.
It ranks the world's poorest countries according to their education systems. Somalia has the least functional system in the world with just 10% of children going to primary school, while Eritrea is second worst. Haiti, Comoros and Ethiopia fare almost as badly.
Whether it's from high school, college or graduate school, most people could easily count their own graduations on one hand. But not 71-year-old Michael Nicholson of Kalamazoo, Mich. Nicholson has earned 29 degrees and is now pursuing his 30th.
Recent estimates of doctoral degree completion rates have ranged from a low of about 33 percent in some fields, such as humanities, to a high of 75 percent in others, such as biomedical sciences, according to a literature review by the Council of Graduate Schools, which just completed its own study of graduate school
A more recent analysis by the Bureau of Labor Statistics found that U.S. workers with at least a bachelor's degree earn a median of $932 weekly. Those with a master's degree earn a median of $1,434. The BLS also found that those with higher levels of education face lower unemployment rates.
Among Millennials, around four-in-ten (39%) of those ages 25 to 37 have a bachelor's degree or higher, compared with just 15% of the Silent Generation, roughly a quarter of Baby Boomers and about three-in-ten Gen Xers (29%) when they were the same age.
During this time, the percentage with high school completion or higher increased from 88 to 94 percent, the percentage with an associate's or higher degree increased from 38 to 49 percent, the percentage with a bachelor's or higher degree increased from 29 to 39 percent, and the percentage with a master's or higher
Twenty-one countries reported that more than 80 percent had completed high school as of 2018.
