Number of Americans With A Bachelor’s Degree Continues To Grow

A new report from the U.S. Census Bureau shows that over the past 15 years the number of Americans holding at least a bachelor’s degree has steadily increased, a trend that holds up for every racial and ethnic group.

The report, Bachelor’s Degree Attainment in the United States: 2005 to 2019, uses data from the American Community Survey (ACS) comparing three non-overlapping five-year periods (2005–2009, 2010– 2014, and 2015–2019) to chart changes in educational attainment over that time span.

The ACS is an ongoing survey conducted by the Census Bureau that provides a range of information on a yearly basis about the U.S. population. It surveys various topics such as jobs and occupations, educational attainment, veterans, whether people own or rent their homes, and other subjets. It has an annual sample size of 3.5 million addresses across the United States and Puerto Rico and is conducted in every county throughout the nation and every municipio in Puerto Rico.

Here is a summary of the main findings:

The number of adults with a bachelor’s degree has increased overall.

The percentage of the population 25 years and older holding at least a bachelor’s degree has increased by about five percentage points across the 15 years.

• In 2005-2009, 27.5% of this group had a bachelor’s degree.
• That increased to 29.3% in 2010-2014.
• And in 2015-2019, the percentage reached 32.1%.

The percentage of adults with a bachelor’s degree increased for all racial/ethnic groups, but attainment gaps by race still persist.

The percent change by race or ethnic group for the 15-year time period were as follows:

White 15.4%

Non-Hispanic White 17.2%

Black 25.4%

Hispanic/Latino 3.9%

American Indian/Alaska Native 17.0%

Asian 9.5%

Native Hawaiian/Other Pacific Islander 24.3%

Other race 20.2%

Two or more races 35.9%

In general, racial groups with relatively lower levels of attainment in the 2005-2009 timer period saw higher levels of growth in attainment over the time period compared with groups that started with higher levels of education. Nonetheless, as we know from many other surveys and reports, racial gaps in attainment are stubborn reminders of the various barriers to college completion faced by many people of color.

Here are the bachelor’s degree attainment levels by racial group in 2015-2019:

White 33.5%

Non-Hispanic White 35.8%

Black 21.6%

Hispanic/Latino 16.4%

American Indian/Alaska Native 15.0%

Asian 54.3%

Native Hawaiian/Other Pacific Islander 17.8%

Other race 12.0%

Two or more races 31.9%

While the nation saw an overall increase in bachelor’s degree attainment across the 15 years, the gains differed depending on county and region.

Counties that began the 2005-2009 period with higher than the national average attainment experienced greater percentage gains (3.8%) than counties that began below the national average (3.0%). In other words, the county gaps between the “haves” and the “have nots” expanded.

According to the report, “Roughly half of counties that were below the national average in 2005–2009 experienced significant increases in the share of the population with a bachelor’s degree or higher, while over three-quarters of counties that were above the national aver-age in 2005–2009 experienced significant increases.”

At the regional level, there were also substantial differences.

In counties in the Northeast, the average of the population with at least a bachelor’s degree was 29.8%, compared to 25.4% for those in the West, 21.9% for Midwest counties, and 19.7% for counties in the South. Counties in the Northeast had the fastest rate of growth (4.2 percentage points) over the 15- year period compared to slower rates in the counties in the other regions – Midwest (3.6 percentage points), West (3.1 percentage points), and South (3.0 percentage points).

__________

Bottom line: there’s some good news and some bad news in these results. First, the good news. During a period when total college enrollment has been falling, the number of adult Americans holding an undergraduate degree has ticked up modestly. That progress may reflect the large-scale policy efforts that have emphasized degree completion, like those advocated by Complete College America and the Lumina Foundation. And it’s also testimony to the hundreds of colleges and universities across the country that have worked hard to increase student retention and graduation rates.

But then there’s the bad news. Disparities in degree attainment continue for a number of minority groups, despite earnest efforts to cut those down. And geographic gaps have grown, with the South falling more behind other regions over this time period. Given the higher personal earnings, the lower levels of unemployment, the better health outcomes, and the higher rates of community engagement strongly associated with higher levels of education, the importance of increasing – but more importantly – improving the equality of educational attainment must remain an important national priority.