Enrollment in colleges is declining, and the data in this section help explain why. You’ll discover which sectors are growing, and which are declining, and also which racial and ethnic groups are gaining or losing ground. Debt can cast a shadow over the income benefits of attending college. One table focuses particularly on how student-loan debt affects women.
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NewsStudent Debt Is Worse for Women
A college degree falls short of putting women on equal economic footing with men, and they have the student-loan burden to prove it. -
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How Women Fare Compared With Men in College and Afterward
If college success is measured in terms of financial rewards, women are trailing men considerably. -
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Students by Gender, Race, and Ethnicity
The enrollment of women in college fell by nearly 100,000 since 2010, while male enrollment grew by more than 12,000. -
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Fastest-Growing Colleges
Of the 20 fastest-growing public doctoral institutions, 12 were in the Southwest or Southeast. -
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International Students in the United States, by Place of Origin
As usual, China and India sent by far the most students, but Brazil, Iran, Mexico, Nigeria, and Saudi Arabia also stood out in their regions. -
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Colleges With the Best 6-Year Graduation Rates
Six-year graduation rates at the top institutions, and over all, were best at four-year private nonprofit institutions. -
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Enrollment by Carnegie Classification
Baccalaureate colleges represent 13 percent of all institutions but less than 5 percent of overall enrollment. -
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Colleges With the Largest Enrollments
Institutions with significant online enrollments stood out in their categories for their exceptionally high student counts. -
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Colleges With the Best Out-of-State Draw
Among the colleges that drew many students from other states were elite private institutions and tribal colleges. -
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For-Profit Companies With the Highest Enrollment
Even companies near the top of the list for total enrollment at their colleges in the fall of 2016 have not necessarily fared well since then. -
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Enrollment Change From Previous Year, by Sector, Fall 2015 to Spring 2018
Four-year institutions in all sectors and two-year public institutions saw enrollment drop from spring 2017 to spring 2018. -
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Colleges With the Greatest Racial and Ethnic Diversity
The six colleges on the list with the highest percentages of African-Americans were for-profit institutions or two-year private nonprofit institutions. -
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Distribution of Students Among Sectors by Race and Ethnicity
Hispanic and American Indian students were less likely to attend four-year private nonprofit colleges than were students of other racial and ethnic groups. -
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Distribution of Students Among Sectors by Gender
In the fall of 2016, there were nearly 30 percent more women than men enrolled in college. In 1986, there were 14 percent more. -
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Characteristics of Recipients of Research Doctorates
Doctorate recipients in the humanities and arts were more likely than recipients in other fields to have secured work in academe. -
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Average Education-Related Debt of Doctorate Recipients
Women accumulated more debt than men at every level of higher education, but the gender gap was overshadowed by racial disparities. -
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Student-Loan Borrowers, by Age and Amount Owed
More than 44.7 million people, or 14 percent of the population of the United States, owed money on student loans at the end of 2017. -
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Estimated Student Aid, by Source
Most of the more than $250 billion in student aid came from the federal government, and a good share of that came in the form of loans. -
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U.S. Institutions With the Most Foreign Students
The four doctoral institutions with the highest numbers of international students in 2016-17 were all private nonprofit institutions -
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Top Destinations of Americans Studying Abroad
Britain, Italy, and Spain were the top choices in 2015-16. Outside Europe, the most-popular destinations were China, Australia, and Costa Rica. -
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Change in First-Time International Graduate Applications and Enrollment in the United States
For the first time in more than a decade, international applications for first-time enrollment in American graduate schools decreased from the previous year. -
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Enrollment in Distance Education
A fifth of graduate students at four-year public institutions studied exclusively through distance education. -
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Colleges With the Most Students Enrolled Exclusively in Distance-Education Courses
Eleven of the top 20 colleges for exclusive-distance-education enrollment were for-profit institutions. -
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Top 5 MOOC Providers by Number of Registered Users
Coursera, founded in 2012 by two computer scientists at Stanford University, has a strong lead in the total number of learners. -
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MOOC Course Distribution by Subject
Of the more than 10,000 massive open online courses that have ever been offered, over a third were in technology or business. -
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Cumulative Growth in Number of MOOCs, 2011-18
The number of massive open online courses offered worldwide grew by more than 2,500 in the past academic year. -
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Degrees Conferred, by Level and Discipline
Women were far more likely than men to earn bachelor’s degrees in library science and the health professions, and far less likely to do so in engineering technologies. -
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Colleges With the Highest Student Mobility Rates
CUNY campuses made a strong showing among colleges with the highest mobility rates, a measure of students’ later earnings as compared with their parents’. -
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Colleges With the Best 4-Year Graduation Rates
Only three private nonprofit institutions and no public or for-profit institutions had four-year graduation rates exceeding 90 percent. -
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2-Year Colleges With the Best 3-Year Graduation Rates
Students at two-year public institutions were more likely than those enrolled at colleges in other sectors to stay enrolled beyond the normal completion period. -
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Universities That Granted the Most Research Doctorates
Stanford University was the lone private institution among the 10 that granted the most doctoral degrees in 2016. -
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Salaries of Degree Recipients, by Gender and Field
Women’s annual salaries were the closest to men’s in the field of education, excluding the teaching of science and math, and farthest apart among those with bachelor’s degrees in the physical sciences.
