Is College Worth It?
Americans have mixed views on the importance of having a degree. 47% say the cost is worth it only if someone doesn’t have to take out loans.
Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World
Americans have mixed views on the importance of having a degree. 47% say the cost is worth it only if someone doesn’t have to take out loans.
The higher education pipeline suggests a long path is ahead for increasing diversity, especially in fields like computing and engineering.
College graduates without a college-educated parent have lower incomes and less wealth, on average, than those with a parent who has a bachelor’s or higher degree.
The charts below allow for comparisons between racial or ethnic groups over time on a range of measures including educational attainment, household income, life expectancy and others. You may select any two groups at a time for comparison.
Black and Hispanic workers remain underrepresented in STEM jobs compared with their share of the U.S. workforce.
Household incomes in the United States have rebounded from their 2012 bottom in the wake of the Great Recession. And for the most part, the typical incomes of households headed by less-educated adults as well as more-educated adults have increased.
This year will likely be the first year in which women are a majority of the U.S. college-educated labor force.
Between February and June 2020, the share of young adults who are neither enrolled in school nor employed has more than doubled.
The 30-year low reflects in part tight labor markets and falling unemployment, but also higher shares of young women at work or in school.
The number of U.S. households renting their home increased significantly between 2006 and 2016, as did the share.
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