15 Education Stats You Should Know

• 74.9 million U.S. residents are enrolled in schools – from nursery schools to colleges.
• 56 million students are projected to be enrolled in the nation’s elementary and high schools (K-12) this fall. The number exceeds the total in 1969 (51.6 million) when the last of the “baby boom” children expanded school enrollments.
• More than 2 million students are home-schooled.
• Since 1999, the number of children who are home-schooled has increased by 75%, although homeschooled children represent only 4% of all school-age children nationwide.
• 58 percent of home-schooled students are boys, even though boys are a slight minority in the U.S. school population.
• 11.8 million school-age children (5 to 17) speak a language other than English at home. They make up nearly 1 in 5 children in this age group. Most of these children (8.5 million) speak Spanish.
• 21.6 million students enrolled in the nation’s colleges and universities in September 2012. This is up 6.2 million since Fall 2000.
• Females comprised the majority of college students: 12.3 million females attended in fall 2012, compared with 9.3 million males.
• 15 percent of all college students are 35 and older. They make up 32 percent of those attending school part time.
• 42 percent of of 18- to 24-year-olds are enrolled in college. 
• In the U.S., student loans exceeded $1 trillion for the first time in 2013 with the average student loan soaring to $23,300. (Source: BBC)
• Last year 284,000 college graduates, including 37,000 advance degree holders in the U.S. were working minimum wage jobs in 2012. (Source: Wall Street Journal)
• Out of 41.7 million working college graduates of 2010 in the U.S., 48% work jobs that don’t require a bachelor’s degree. (Source: Huffington Post)
• In less than 6 years, Apple’s iTunesU reached the 1 billion course download threshold. (Source: Apple)
• School pays! $83,144 Average annual earnings of workers age 18 and older with an advanced degree. This compares with $58,613 a year for those with bachelor’s degrees, $31,283 with a high school diploma only, and $21,023 for those without a high school diploma.

Source: U.S. Census Bureau unless otherwise noted above