For decades, every successive generation in the United States has been better educated than the last. Not any more.
At least that’s what a new report from the American Council on Education concludes. The report, the 23rd edition of “Minorities in Higher Education,” found that 34.9 percent of young adults, those ages 25 to 29, had at least an associate degree in 2006. A nearly identical proportion, 34.3 percent, of those age 30 or above had that level of education.
“It appears to me that we are at a tipping point in our nation’s history,” Molly Corbett Broad, president of the council, said on Wednesday. “One of the core tenets of the American dream is the hope that younger generations, who’ve had greater opportunities for educational advancement than their parents and grandparents, will be better off than the generations before them. And yet this report shows that aspiration is at serious risk.”
The shift, in part, results from persistent gaps between the educational attainment of people of different races and ethnic groups. For example, Hispanic-Americans lag behind non-Hispanic white Americans in college-enrollment rates, persistence, and degree attainment.
That gap endures at a time when the Hispanic population in the United States is growing much faster than the overall population. Hispanics account for 20 percent of young Americans, compared with only 11 percent of those age 30 or older.
Young Hispanic Americans, however, are actually less well educated than their older counterparts. Only 16 percent have at least an associate degree, compared with 17.8 percent of Hispanic Americans age 30 or older.
By contrast, young and older black Americans have similar degree-attainment rates. And young Asian-Americans and non-Hispanic whites have higher rates than their older counterparts.
Taken as a whole, however, the college-attainment level is flat at a time when more jobs require at least a two-year degree. “The alarm bells should be going off,” Ms. Broad said.
Obtaining a college degree, of course, starts with enrolling. And traditional college-age Hispanics enroll at a lower rate than young Americans of any other ethnic group except Native Americans, according to the report. In 2006, only 25 percent of Hispanics ages 18 to 24 were enrolled in college. Though low, that rate is up from 18 percent in 1987.
The enrollment rate for white college-age Americans, however, grew from 30 percent to 44 percent during that same time period. And the rate for all Americans in that age group went up 11 percentage points.
The report also found that:
- Between 1995 and 2005, total minority enrollment at the nation’s colleges rose from 3.4 million students to 5 million students—a 50-percent increase. White enrollment increased 8 percent, to 10.7 million, during that same time.
Over that same 10-year period, the number of associate and bachelor’s degrees awarded grew by 35 percent. The number of minority students earning associate degrees increased by 84 percent, to 201,000, while the number earning bachelor’s degrees grew by 65 percent, to 355,000.
In 2005, minorities made up 29 percent of the nearly 17.5 million students on America’s campuses.
The report, which can be purchased on the council’s Web site, uses data collected by the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics and the U.S. Census Bureau.
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