NCES Blog

NCES is pleased to present The Condition of Education 2020, an annual report mandated by the U.S. Congress that summarizes the latest data on education in the United States. This report uses data from across the center and from other sources and is designed to help policymakers and the public monitor educational progress. This year’s report includes 47 indicators on topics ranging from prekindergarten through postsecondary education, as well as labor force outcomes and international comparisons.

The data show that 50.7 million students were enrolled in public elementary and secondary schools (prekindergarten through grade 12) and approximately 5.7 million students were enrolled in private elementary and secondary schools in fall 2017, the most recent year for which data were available. In school year 2017–18, some 85 percent of public high school students graduated on time with a regular diploma. This rate was similar to the previous year’s rate. About 2.2 million, or 69 percent, of those who completed high school in 2018, enrolled in college that fall. Meanwhile, the status dropout rate, or the percentage of 16- to 24-year-olds who were not enrolled in school and did not have a high school diploma or its equivalent, was 5.3 percent in 2018.

Total undergraduate enrollment in degree-granting postsecondary institutions in 2018 stood at 16.6 million students. The average net price of college for first-time, full-time undergraduates attending 4-year institutions was $13,700 at public institutions, $27,000 at private nonprofit institutions, and $22,100 at private for-profit institutions (in constant 2018–19 dollars). In the same year, institutions awarded 1.0 million associate’s degrees, 2.0 million bachelor’s degrees, 820,000 master’s degrees, and 184,000 doctor’s degrees.

Ninety-two percent of 25- to 34-year-olds in the United States had a high school diploma or its equivalent in 2018. In comparison, the average rate for the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) member countries was 85 percent. Some 49 percent of these individuals in the United States had obtained a postsecondary degree, compared with the OECD average of 44 percent. Similar to previous years, annual median earnings in 2018 were higher for 25- to 34-year-olds with higher levels of education. In 2018, U.S. 25- to 34-year-olds with a bachelor’s or higher degree earned 66 percent more than those with a high school diploma or equivalent.

The Condition of Education includes an Executive Summary, an At a Glance section, a Reader’s Guide, a Glossary, and a Guide to Sources, all of which provide additional background information. Each indicator includes references to the source data tables used to produce the indicator.

As new data are released throughout the year, indicators will be updated and made available on The Condition of Education website. 

In addition to publishing The Condition of Education, NCES produces a wide range of other reports and datasets designed to help inform policymakers and the public about significant trends and topics in education. More information about the latest activities and releases at NCES may be found on our website or at our social media sites on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

By James L. Woodworth, NCES Commissioner

International comparisons provide reference points for researchers and policy analysts to understand trends and patterns in national education data and are important as U.S. students compete in an increasingly global economy.

Education at a Glance, an annual publication produced by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), provides data on the structure, finances, and progress of education systems in 36 OECD countries, including the United States, as well as a number of OECD partner countries. The report also includes state-level information on key benchmarks to inform state and local policies on global competitiveness. 

The recently released 2019 edition of the report shows that the United States is above the international average on some measures, such as participation in and funding of higher education, but lags behind in others, such as participation in early childhood education programs.

Distribution of 25- to 34-Year-Olds With a College Education, by Level of Education

The percentage of U.S. 25- to 34-year-olds with an associate’s or bachelor’s degree increased by 8 percentage points between 2008 and 2018, reaching 49 percent, compared with the OECD average of 44 percent. However, the attainment rates varied widely across the United States in 2017, from 32 percent for those living in Louisiana and West Virginia to 58 percent for those living in Massachusetts and 73 percent for those living in the District of Columbia.

The percentage of U.S. students completing a bachelor’s degree within 4 years was 38 percent in 2018, about the same as the average among OECD countries with available data (39 percent); however, after an additional 2 years, the U.S. graduation rate (69 percent) was slightly above the OECD average of 67 percent (achieved after 3 years). While a higher percentage of U.S. young adults had completed a bachelor’s degree compared with young adults in other OECD countries, a lower percentage had completed a master’s or doctoral degree. Eleven percent of 25- to 34-year-olds in the United States had completed a master’s or doctoral degree, compared with an average of 15 percent across OECD countries.

Higher Education Spending

U.S. spending on higher education is also relatively high compared with the OECD average, in both absolute and relative terms. The United States spent $30,165 per higher education student in 2017, the second-highest amount after Luxembourg and nearly double the OECD average ($15,556). Also, U.S. spending on higher education as a percentage of GDP (2.5 percent) was substantially higher than the OECD average (1.5 percent). These total expenditures include amounts received from governments, students, and all other sources. 

Early Childhood Education

Contrasting with enrollment patterns at the higher education level, the level of participation in early childhood education programs in the United States is below the OECD average and falling further behind. Between 2005 and 2017, average enrollment rates for 3- to 5-year-olds across OECD countries increased from 76 to 86 percent. In contrast, the rate in the United States remained stable at 66 percent during this time period. Among U.S. states, the 2017 enrollment rates for 3- to 5-year-olds ranged from less than 50 percent in Idaho, North Dakota, and Wyoming to more than 70 percent in Connecticut, the District of Columbia, and New Jersey.

Going deeper into the data, on average, 88 percent of 4-year-olds in OECD countries were enrolled in education programs in 2017, compared with 66 percent in the United States. The enrollment rate for 3-year-olds in the United States was 42 percent, compared with the OECD average of 77 percent.

Gender Gaps in Employment

Education at a Glance also looks at employment and other outcomes from education. The report found that the 2017 gender gap in employment rates was lower for those who had completed higher levels of education. This pattern holds in the United States, where the gender gap in the employment rate was particularly high among 25- to 34-year-olds who had not completed high school. For this age group, the employment rate was 73 percent for men and 41 percent for women, a difference of 32 percentage points, compared with the average difference of 28 percentage points across OECD countries. The gender gap in the employment rate was 14 percentage points among U.S. adults with only a high school education and 7 percentage points among those who had completed college.

In 2017, the gender differences in average earnings were also wider in the United States than in the OECD averages. These gender gaps in earnings between male and female full-time workers existed across all levels of education. In the United States, college-educated 25- to 64-year-old women earned 71 percent of what their male peers earned. This gender gap was wider than for all other OECD countries except for Chile, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Israel, Italy, Mexico, Poland, and the Slovak Republic.

This is just a sample of the information that can be found in Education at a Glance 2019. You can also find information on the working conditions of teachers, including time spent in the classroom and salary data; student/teacher ratios; college tuitions and loans; and education finance and per student expenditures. Education at a Glance also contains data on the international United Nations Sustainable Development Goals related to education.

Browse the full report to see how the United States compares with other countries on these important education-related topics.

Percentage of 25- to 34-year-olds with a college education, by level of education: 2018

¹ Year of reference differs from 2018 (see NOTE).                                                                                                                                       

NOTE: Reporting of some countries is not consistent with international categories. Please refer to Education at a Glance Database, http://stats.oecd.org. for details. Comparisons follow International Standard Classification of Education (ISCED) 2011 education levels: “Associate’s or similar degrees” refers to ISCED 2011 level 5, “Bachelor’s or equivalent” refers to level 6, “Master’s or equivalent” refers to level 7, and “Doctoral or equivalent” refers to level 8. Countries are ranked in descending order of the total percentage of tertiary-educated 25- to 34-year-olds. See Annex 3 for additional notes (https://doi.org/10.1787/f8d7880d-en).

SOURCE: Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (2019), Education at a Glance Database, http://stats.oecd.org. 

By Thomas Snyder 

Across the country, hallways and classrooms are full of activity as students return for the 2019–20 school year. Each year, the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) compiles back-to-school facts and figures that give a snapshot of our schools and colleges for the coming year. You can see the full report on the NCES website, but here are a few “by-the-numbers” highlights. You can also click on the hyperlinks throughout the blog to see additional data on these topics.

The staff of NCES and of the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) hopes our nation’s students, teachers, administrators, school staffs, and families have an outstanding school year!

56.6 million

The number of students expected to attend public and private elementary and secondary schools this year—slightly more than in the 2018–19­ school year (56.5 million).

Overall, 50.8 million students are expected to attend public schools this year. The racial and ethnic profile of public school students includes 23.7 million White students, 13.9 million Hispanic students, 7.7 million Black students, 2.7 million Asian students, 2.1 million students of Two or more races, 0.5 million American Indian/Alaska Native students, and 0.2 million Pacific Islander students.

About 5.8 million students are expected to attend private schools this year.

$13,440

The projected per student expenditure in public elementary and secondary schools in 2019–20. Total expenditures for public elementary and secondary schools are projected to be $680 billion for the 2019–20 school year.

3.7 million

The number of teachers in fall 2019. There will be 3.2 million teachers in public schools and 0.5 million teachers in private schools.

3.7 million

The number of students expected to graduate from high school this school year, including 3.3 million from public schools and nearly 0.4 million from private schools.

19.9 million

The number of students expected to attend American colleges and universities this fall—lower than the peak of 21.0 million in 2010. About 13.9 million students will attend four-year institutions and 6.0 million will attend two-year institutions.

56.7%

The projected percentage of female postsecondary students in fall 2019, for a total of 11.3 million female students, compared with 8.6 million male students.

By Sidney Wilkinson-Flicker

New data suggest that the socioeconomic status of high school freshmen plays a role in their future education and employment.  

The data come from the NCES High School Longitudinal Study of 2009 (HSLS:09), which follows a nationally representative group of ninth-graders. In 2009, NCES measured the socioeconomic status (SES) of these students by collecting data on the income, occupation, and educational attainment of their parents or guardians. In 2016, NCES conducted a follow-up survey with the 2009 ninth-graders, gathering data on their educational and employment status.   

Data show that 2009 ninth-graders who were in the lowest-SES category were 20 percentage points more likely to be neither enrolled in postsecondary education nor working in 2016 than those in the highest-SES category (figure 1). These students were also 50 percentage points less likely to be enrolled in postsecondary institutions than those in the highest-SES category (figure 2).

These findings are just a glimpse into the insights on socioeconomic mobility that HSLS:09 can generate by linking data on parent and child educational attainment and employment.

Check out our recent spotlight indicator in the Condition of Education for more information on how the educational and employment outcomes of young adults varied in relation to family socioeconomic status.

By Joel McFarland

The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) is pleased to announce the release of the 2020 Classification of Instructional Programs (CIP), which reflects the various programs of study being offered at postsecondary institutions around the country. This is the sixth edition of the CIP and contains more than 300 new programs of study, which can be searched on the new 2020 CIP website.

The CIP is updated about every 10 years to reflect changes in instructional program structures and the introduction of new fields of study. Beginning next year, postsecondary institutions will use the 2020 CIP when they report the degrees and certificates awarded for the 2020 Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) Completions Survey.

The CIP is a taxonomy of instructional programs that provides a classification system for the thousands of different programs offered by postsecondary institutions. Its purpose is to facilitate the organization, collection, and reporting of fields of study and program completions. CIP Codes and IPEDS Completions Survey data are used by many different groups of people for many different reasons. For instance, economists use the data to study the emerging labor pools to identify people with specific training and skills. The business community uses IPEDS Completions Survey data to help recruit minority and female candidates in specialized fields, by identifying the numbers of these students who are graduating from specific institutions.  Prospective college students can use the data to look for institutions offering specific programs of postsecondary study at all levels, from certificates to doctoral degrees.

To allow sufficient time for institutions to update their reporting systems, NCES is releasing the 2020 CIP and the new website approximately one year before it will be implemented.

The 2020 CIP website has many features, including multiple search options, an FAQ section, resources, a help page, and contact information. Users can search the 2020 CIP by code or keyword and the resource page contains lists of new, moved, and deleted CIP codes as well as Word and Excel versions of the 2020 CIP and 2010 CIP. The website also contains an online data tool called the CIP Wizard, which enables users to focus on changes at a specific institution between the 2010 and 2020 CIPs.

The CIP Wizard requires users to specify an institution by either name or IPEDS ID, a unique identification number assigned by NCES. The Wizard then searches the last 3 years of the IPEDS Completions Survey and compiles the CIP codes used by that institution. The Wizard also crosswalks an institution’s 2010 CIP codes to its 2020 CIP Codes and generates a report that categorizes the codes into the following categories:

• No substantive changes—codes that did not change from the previous version of the CIP

• New codes—codes that were added to this version of the CIP

• Moved codes—codes that were relocated and have two references: one in the former location  and one in the current location

• Deleted codes—codes that were removed from the previous version of the CIP

By looking through the CIP Wizard report, an institution can see exactly what changes have been made to the CIP codes it used in the last 3 years of Completions Survey data.

The CIP Wizard also suggests new CIP codes that might be of interest to the user, allows the user to export a report as either a Word or Excel file, and creates a file of CIP codes that can be uploaded to an institution’s reporting system.

Over the next several months, NCES will be preparing web-based tutorials on how to use the CIP website and the CIP Wizard. Until then, users can reference a list of frequently asked questions and a detailed help document, and also submit  questions by email to CIP2020@ed.gov.

By Michelle Coon