Every year the National Center for Education Statistics releases a report, “The Condition of Education,” that offers up the latest data about prekindergarten through postsecondary education. The congressionally mandated report is designed to help “policy makers and the public monitor educational progress,” James L. Woodworth, the center’s commissioner, wrote in the introduction to this year’s report, which was released this week.
How up-to-date are you on the state of higher education? Test your knowledge with this quiz:
1) Over the next decade, undergraduate enrollment is projected to:
a. increase
b. decrease
c. stay the same
2) What was the average salary of a full-time faculty member on a nine-month contract for the 2017-18 academic year?
a. $60,685
b. $68,733
c. $86,701
d. $94,224
3) In 2017 a greater share of students worked at jobs while going to college compared with students a dozen years before. True or false?
4) Women earned approximately what percentage of the bachelor’s degrees conferred in biology and biomedical sciences in 2016-17?
a. 20 percent
b. 40 percent
c. 60 percent
d. 80 percent
5) Since 2000 the number of private colleges has:
a. gone up
b. gone down a little
c. gone down a lot (hey, I’ve read the stories)
d. been flat
6) What share of high-school graduates enroll in college the following fall?
a. three-quarters
b. two-thirds
c. half
d. one-third
7) Match the degree with the corresponding number of them that were conferred in 2016-17:
a. associate
b. bachelor’s
c. master’s
d. doctorate
1. 181,000
2. 805,000
3. 1 million
4. 2 million
8) Immigrants, or “nonresident aliens,” accounted for what share of STEM doctorates conferred in 2016-17?
a. about a quarter
b. a third
c. close to half
d. more than half
9) For a family of four with an annual household income at the poverty threshold of $24,600, the average net price of attending a four-year institution in 2016-17 was somewhere around:
a. $2,500
b. $5,500
c. $9,500
d. $12,500
10) The average size of an institutional grant made by a private, nonprofit, four-year college in 2016-17 was:
a. $4,800
b. $6,100
c. $12,600
d. $20,200
Answers:
1) a. From 2017 to 2028 the number of undergraduates enrolled in degree-granting postsecondary institutions is predicted to rise from 16.8 million to 17.2 million, or 2.4 percent.
2) c. The other answers correspond to the average salaries of faculty members who were lecturers (a), worked at community colleges (b), or worked at public doctoral-granting institutions (d).
3) False. Half of all full-time undergraduates held jobs in 2005, while 43 percent did in 2017. Among part-time students, the share went from 86 percent in 2005 to 81 percent in 2017.
4) c.
5) a. There were 1,247 private, nonprofit four-year colleges in 2000 and 1,301 in 2017, a 4-percent increase.
6) b.
7) a.-3; b.-4; c.-2; d.-1
8) d. It was 56 percent.
9) c.
10) d. The average institutional grant at private colleges was more than three times as large as ones given at public institutions, and more than four times as high as at for-profits. The size of such grants is used as evidence of the high-cost/high-aid business model that is exerting pressure on such colleges.
Dan Berrett writes about teaching, learning, the curriculum, and educational quality. Follow him on Twitter @danberrett, or write to him at dan.berrett@chronicle.com.
