In the U.S., around 86% of kids graduate high school[1], around 63% of high school graduates go to 4-year colleges[2], and around 64% of them graduate within 6 years[3].
By that logic around 35% of 24-year-old Americans have bachelor degrees. More than a third, but not by much.
US is pretty dismal at graduation rates overall - Department of Education is not even tracking the percent of graduates completing a 4-year degree in 4 years anymore, instead preferring a generous 6-year completion metric for a 4-year degree, which stands at 59% https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=40
41% of all US undergraduate students have nothing material to show 6 years down the road except for the mounts of student debt. The quoted figure of 22% of those debts being in some kind of default starts looking optimistic.
It's still pretty difficult for many Americans to finish university.
Only 55% of students that start at a 4-year university program graduate within 6 years. Only 19.5% of students that start at a non-flagship, 4-year program finish on time.
I'm guessing the people who don't graduate within 6 years are not paying fulltime tuition, and have an outside job to pay for their degree. So your point is way over-exaggerated.
First off: 4 year graduation rates are stupid. There's no other way to put it, they're a stupid measurement and one colleges should stop paying so much attention to. At my school, they've made a huge push to try and get everyone out the doors within 4 years, to the point they have informed academic advisors that they should be advising students to cut corners and "just graduate". While it may be a worthwhile standard for a private university, where a large majority either doesn't work or works a very small number of hours for "spending money", at a public university, with many students paying their own way through college, its a bad measurement. Its better for everyone for a student to take 6 years to graduate and walk out the doors with half the debt of someone who graduates in 4 years (or less).
As far as college/vocational schools, if it is possible, you should go to college. However, don't study what you want to go into, study something tangentally related to it (unless you are going into highly focused field, like engineering or a medical degree, and even then try and get as far away from what you want to as possible while still being on track). Going to a school I was "undermatched" for, and going into the computer science program, I was bored out of my mind, and just wasn't getting much out of it. After switching to statistics, I've found my classes much more enjoyable, and have vastly increased my understanding of both statistics and computer science.
While it may not hold true for everyone, I've found that working in something tangentially related to what I wanted to do (Computer "stuff", originally), I learned a massive amount about both the field I wanted to work in, and in the field I was studying. While it may not help me get a job, I learned quite a bit more than I would have otherwise, which is why I went to college in the first place.
Another question I'd ask is how many semesters someone took to graduate (and number of credit hours earned).
I paid for most of college myself and graduated debt free. One of the biggest savings came from getting approval to take 21-24 credit hours worth of courses for the last two years. You pay the same price for tuition and housing for 12+ credit hours at most schools. Armed with this and the ability to handle the stress of that workload, you can halve the cost of going to college if you can do this for all four years.
I wish I had thought about doing this sooner. The reason I ended up doing it was because many of my friends were 2-3 grades above me and when I noticed that most friends had graduated I figured it would be better to get out ASAP and make new friends in the real world 2 years later.
A large percent of students never get a degree. Here’s the best statistics that I could find. It talks about 6 year graduation rates but I think a large percent of those who don’t graduate within 6 years never graduate.
Okay, but if you didn't go to college those 4 years, you'd have a full-time job to pay for those things. For most people, 4 years of college implies 4 years of not working, or 4 years of low paying part time jobs.
A lot of people cover those costs with student loan money, so they're relevant to a conversation about student loans.
Actually, the US numbers are already filtered to 4-year institutions.
"The overall 6-year graduation rate for first-time, full-time undergraduate students who began seeking a bachelor’s degree at 4-year degree-granting institutions in fall 2012 was 62 percent. That is, by 2018 some 62 percent of students had completed a bachelor’s degree at the same institution where they started in 2012."
(There is some amount of skew based on this definition for students who transferred to a different institution and then completed on time, but it's hard to find numbers on students who transferred from one four-year institution to another, as opposed to all transfers who predominantly come from 2-year community colleges.)
The 1% is better than "very rough" :) Assuming 1/3 of Americans go to college, and a life expectancy of 75 years, there should be a little more than 1 million college grads per year, and those schools together should graduate roughly 7-10000 a year.
The percent of Americans age 25+ who attended college (some college) is 55.6%, so it is clear we are seeing well over half of Americans attend college if you include those under 25.
I graduated in 2016 and would recommend everyone possible go to college. Without a degree you are effectively in a lower tier on all job applications, promotion tracks, etc. A degree teaches you how to think, how to be responsible, and is kind of a mark of approval from society.
College is four years of fun anyway, not everything needs to be about progressing your career.
"The official four-year graduation rate for students attending public colleges and universities is 33.3%. The six-year rate is 57.6%"
Accounting for that, a large majority of people attend college.
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