What percentage of Americans go to college? Since the postwar boom in university enrollments of the 1950s and 1960s, Americans have persistently associated a college education with social mobility. The popularity of college helps explain why the share of Americans holding college degrees has continued to rise over the past two decades. According to the most recent U.S. Census Bureau Educational Attainment data released on September 3, 2025 (covering 2024), 38.6% of Americans age 25 and older now hold a bachelor’s degree or higher, and 49.6% of adults age 25 and older hold at least some form of postsecondary credential.
These figures reflect a steady upward trend over the past decade. In 2014, only 32% of adults age 25 and older held a bachelor’s degree or higher. By 2024, that share had risen to 38.6%, an increase of nearly 7 percentage points. At the same time, the share of Americans with no postsecondary education has declined from 57.7% in 2015 to 50.4% in 2024, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. The educational attainment data, drawn from the , offers a useful snapshot of where Americans stand on degree completion across age, sex, race, and geography.
Yet the same period has produced a more complicated public conversation about whether college is worth pursuing in the first place. Confidence in higher education declined significantly between 2015 and 2024 before ticking up modestly in 2025. Why is more of the country earning degrees while a growing share questions whether they should bother? This blog covers what the most recent data show about who holds degrees, what those degrees produce in earnings and employment outcomes, and how Americans currently feel about the institutions that confer them.
Educational Attainment in the United States: 2024
The Census Bureau breaks down the U.S. adult population by highest level of education completed. The data below reflect the most recent fully reported figures (calendar year 2024, released September 2025) for adults age 25 and older.
| Highest Level of Education | Share of Adults 25 and Older (2024) |
| Less than high school diploma | 8.5% |
| High school diploma (no college) | 27.9% |
| Some college, no degree | 14.0% |
| Associate degree | 10.9% |
| Bachelor’s degree (highest credential) | 23.7% |
| Master’s, professional, or doctoral degree | 14.9% |
| Total with bachelor’s degree or higher | 38.6% |
| Total with associate degree or higher | 49.5% |
Translated into raw numbers, the bachelor’s-or-higher group represents roughly 87 million Americans, while the broader associate-degree-or-higher group represents approximately 112 million Americans. The growth at the top end of the distribution has been particularly fast: the share holding a master’s, professional, or doctoral degree rose from 10.9% in 2011 to 14.9% in 2024, an increase of nearly 37% in roughly a decade.
Attainment by Age and Sex
The Census Bureau data also break down attainment by age cohort, which reveals how steadily the country has been pushing more residents through bachelor’s programs across successive generations.
| Demographic Group | Bachelor’s Degree or Higher (2024) |
| Ages 25 to 39 | 42.8% |
| Ages 40 to 54 | 41.5% |
| Ages 55 and older | 34.2% |
| Women, 25 and older | 40.1% |
| Men, 25 and older | 37.1% |
Women now hold bachelor’s degrees at a meaningfully higher rate than men, a gap that has widened gradually over the past two decades. In 2022, the comparable figures were 39% for women and 36.2% for men; by 2024, the gap had grown to roughly 3 percentage points. Significant gender disparities persist in specific STEM fields that lead to some of the highest-paying jobs, but at the aggregate level women now represent a greater share of degree holders in the United States.
Generationally, the youngest age cohort (ages 25 to 39) holds bachelor’s degrees at 42.8%, well above the 34.2% rate for adults 55 and older. The 25-to-39 cohort completed college during the period of fastest expansion in U.S. higher education enrollment, which began accelerating in the early 2000s. The 40-to-54 cohort, also a product of the expansion era, is nearly identical in attainment at 41.5%.
Attainment by Race and Ethnicity
Race remains the source of the most pronounced contrasts in U.S. degree attainment. While all racial and ethnic groups have seen meaningful gains over the past 12 years, the gaps between groups have not narrowed substantially. The most recent comparable Census Bureau data (2022, the last year for which complete race-and-ethnicity breakdowns are publicly available in identical format to the historical series) shows the following attainment levels for adults 25 and older with a bachelor’s degree or higher:
| Racial or Ethnic Group | Bachelor’s+ in 2012 | Bachelor’s+ in 2022 | Change |
| Asian | 51.0% | 59.3% | +8.3 points |
| Non-Hispanic White | 34.5% | 41.8% | +7.3 points |
| Black | 21.2% | 27.6% | +6.4 points |
| Hispanic | 14.5% | 20.9% | +6.4 points |
All four groups have seen attainment gains of roughly 6 to 8 percentage points over the decade, but the absolute gaps remain wide. Asian adults are more than twice as likely as Hispanic adults to hold a bachelor’s degree. White and Black attainment gaps remain at roughly 14 percentage points. These gaps reflect a combination of factors including K-12 educational access, college affordability constraints, family wealth differentials affecting tuition payments, and persistent disparities in admissions and retention rates.
Average earnings increases over the decade also varied across groups. Non-Hispanic White workers with a bachelor’s degree saw the largest nominal increase in wages over the period, while Black peers saw the smallest nominal increase. The earnings differential by race among degree holders adds another layer of complexity to the topline attainment numbers.
Attainment by Nativity
Recent immigrants to the United States are more likely to hold college credentials than U.S. natives or earlier immigrants. Among immigrants who arrived in the United States since 2010, 45.2% held a bachelor’s degree or higher in 2022, compared with 38.0% of U.S. natives and 32.8% of immigrants who arrived during the 1990s. The pattern reflects U.S. visa policy, which has emphasized skills-based admissions and which has concentrated recent immigration in higher-education-qualified workers. The large number of immigrants and international students completing U.S. degrees also reflects the international consensus about the value of U.S. higher education credentials.
The Earnings Premium of a College Degree
The most concrete economic argument for completing college lies in the earnings differential between degree holders and non-degree holders. The produces a steep and consistent earnings gradient across attainment levels for full-time wage and salary workers age 25 and older.
| Highest Education Level | Median Weekly Earnings (2024) | Annualized Earnings | Unemployment Rate (2024) |
| Less than high school diploma | $738 | ~$38,400 | 6.2% |
| High school diploma, no college | $930 | ~$48,400 | 4.2% |
| Some college or associate degree | $1,056 | ~$54,900 | 3.5% |
| Bachelor’s degree only | $1,543 | ~$80,200 | 2.4% |
| Master’s degree | ~$1,840 | ~$95,700 | 2.0% |
| Professional degree | $2,363 | ~$122,900 | 1.3% |
| Doctoral degree | $2,040 | ~$106,100 | 1.4% |
The pattern in the data is consistent: at every education level, higher attainment produces both higher earnings and lower unemployment risk. The bachelor’s-versus-high-school gap is particularly notable. A bachelor’s degree holder earns 66% more per week than a high school graduate, and the unemployment rate for bachelor’s degree holders is roughly half that of high school graduates.
Over a working lifetime, the differential compounds substantially. Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce estimates that bachelor’s degree holders earn approximately $2.8 million over a 40-year career, roughly 75% more than workers with only a high school diploma. Households headed by someone with a bachelor’s degree or higher reported a median income of $132,700 in 2024, compared with $58,410 for households headed by someone with only a high school diploma, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
Employment Outcomes for Degree Holders
Degrees have become prerequisites for entering a broad range of desirable job fields. Per the Liberty Street Economics blog of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, more than 60% of college graduates work in jobs that require college degrees. The share is even higher in densely populated metropolitan areas like New York and Chicago, where degree-requiring jobs are concentrated. The fact that degrees are increasingly required at the point of hiring is a major reason for the steady rise in degree holders.
Per the Census Bureau’s 2024 data, 76.5% of people working in professional and related occupations held a bachelor’s degree or higher, as did 64.2% of people working in management, business, and financial occupations. By contrast, the occupation with the highest share of high-school-or-associate-degree workers was installation, maintenance, and repair (78.3%). The industry with the highest concentration of bachelor’s-or-higher workers was information (64.9%), followed closely by education and health services (61.2%).
The specific major a student selects has become a smaller factor relative to whether they graduated at all. A Forbes analysis noted that only 27% of graduates work in a job that directly relates to their major. While specialized fields like computer science, engineering, and the health professions enjoy stronger major-to-job alignment, the broader pattern is that the credential itself produces meaningful employment value even when the major does not directly map to the eventual career.
Geographic Patterns in Attainment
The U.S. Census Bureau released new American Community Survey 5-year estimates in showing that the share of adults age 25 and older with a bachelor’s degree or higher in metropolitan statistical areas rose from 34.2% during the 2015-2019 period to 37.8% during the 2020-2024 period. Roughly 89% of U.S. metro areas experienced increases in degree attainment over this period.
The geographic distribution of degree attainment varies substantially. The Durham-Chapel Hill, North Carolina metro area saw one of the largest increases in attainment, from 45.3% in 2015-2019 to 53.4% in 2020-2024, an 8-point jump driven by the concentration of universities and research institutions in the Research Triangle. The Taos, New Mexico micropolitan area saw a 9.8-point increase. Only one metro area (Springfield, Massachusetts) experienced a decline in attainment over this period, from 32.8% to 29.3%.
At the state level, attainment continues to range widely. Massachusetts, Colorado, Maryland, New Jersey, and Connecticut consistently rank in the top tier of states for bachelor’s degree attainment, with rates above 45%. West Virginia, Mississippi, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Kentucky consistently rank in the bottom tier, with rates below 30%. The gap reflects differences in state higher education funding, K-12 quality, in-migration patterns, and regional economic structure.
The Decline and Partial Recovery of Public Confidence
Attainment has continued to rise, but public confidence in higher education has moved in the opposite direction over the past decade. , conducted in partnership with the Lumina Foundation, has tracked a decade-long decline followed by a recent partial recovery.
| Year | Share with ‘A Great Deal’ or ‘Quite a Lot’ of Confidence in Higher Education |
| 2015 | 57% |
| 2018 | 48% |
| 2023 | 36% |
| 2024 | 36% |
| 2025 | 42% |
The 2025 uptick is meaningful as the first measured increase in a decade, but the share of Americans with high confidence remains 15 percentage points below where it stood in 2015. The 2025 Gallup data also show that the share of Americans with ‘very little’ or no confidence in higher education declined to 23% in 2025, down from 32% in 2024.
A separate August 2025 Gallup poll on the found that only 35% of Americans now consider a college education ‘very important,’ down from 75% in 2010 and representing the lowest figure since the question was first asked. Another 35% described college as ‘fairly important,’ and 24% said it was ‘not too important.’ This is a substantial shift in how Americans frame the value question, and it has occurred even as the financial returns on a degree have remained strong.
Among Americans who reported low confidence in higher education in 2025, 38% cited concerns about political agendas or ideological bias (up from 28% in 2024), 32% pointed to concerns that colleges do not teach the right things or prepare students well for the workforce, and 24% cited cost concerns (notably down from 35% in 2024). The shift in stated concerns toward political and curricular issues, and away from cost, suggests the decline in confidence is driven less by tuition sticker shock than by broader cultural and ideological friction between higher education and a significant portion of the public.
What If You Attend College but Don’t Graduate?
Attending college is not the same as graduating with a degree. The former does not carry the overwhelming earnings and employment advantages afforded to degree holders, and it can produce the worst of both worlds: student debt without the credential that justifies it. Roughly 14% of adults age 25 and older have completed some college without earning a degree, a figure that has remained relatively stable over the past several years. Before applying to any college, prospective students should investigate retention and graduation rates, which we cover at Highest and Lowest College Retention Rates.
The earnings gap between college dropouts and college graduates is significant. Median weekly earnings for workers with some college but no degree run roughly $1,056 in 2024 BLS data, compared with $1,543 for bachelor’s degree holders. The $487 weekly differential translates to roughly $25,000 per year in foregone earnings, which compounds substantially over a working lifetime. Completion matters more than enrollment, and prospective students should pick institutions where they have a realistic chance of finishing.
Why the Demographic Differences Matter
The disparities across sex, nationality, and especially race have contributed to a persistent perception that not all Americans have equal access to quality, affordable higher education. Cost concerns remain a focus of bipartisan public attention. Per Pew Research Center polling, majorities of both Republicans and Democrats agree that college is too expensive, even as the two groups often hold very different views about the cultural value of higher education.
A combination of factors, including high tuition costs, income disparities, demographic differences in K-12 quality, geographic mismatches between communities and four-year institutions, and persistent gaps in admissions, retention, and graduation rates, has shaped who holds a college degree in America today. The 2024 attainment numbers represent real progress on the absolute share of Americans with degrees, but they coexist with persistent gaps that have not narrowed substantially over the past decade.
Final Thoughts on the Percentage of Americans with College Degrees
The most recent Census Bureau data show that 38.6% of Americans age 25 and older now hold a bachelor’s degree or higher, and 49.6% hold at least some postsecondary credential. These shares represent real progress relative to the 30% bachelor’s-or-higher figure from 2011 and the 35% postsecondary-credential figure from 2002. The financial returns on completion remain strong: bachelor’s degree holders earn 66% more per week than high school graduates and face roughly half the unemployment rate.
At the same time, public confidence in higher education has eroded significantly since 2015, even as more Americans complete degrees. The 2025 partial recovery in confidence levels is encouraging, but the underlying tensions about cost, political climate, and workforce preparation have not been fully resolved. For individual students and families, the data still strongly favor completion: the earnings premium is real, the employment advantages are durable, and the lifetime returns compound meaningfully. The question is no longer whether college pays off on average (it does), but whether any specific student is selecting an institution and a path that produces the completion outcome the average depends on.
Stakeholders can approach the broader challenge by strengthening the education pipeline, improving retention and graduation rates, addressing rising tuition costs, and rebuilding the cultural credibility that has eroded over the past decade. It is a good sign that more people are completing degrees. The work of making completion accessible and worthwhile across all demographic groups continues.
Additional Resources
Readers interested in current topics in higher education may also benefit from these blogs:
- Is a College Degree Worth It?
- Most Popular College Majors
- Highest and Lowest College Retention Rates
- Colleges with the Most Out-of-State Students
- Highest Acceptance Rate Colleges
