Race and Region Often Determine Degree Attainment in Big Cities

The Chronicle of Higher Education
May 9, 2010
By Ashley Marchand

College and graduate-school enrollment in the nation's 100 largest cities increased during the 2000s, and often depended upon factors like race and geographic region.
And nationally, a record 35 percent of adults held postsecondary degrees in 2008, an increase from 1990, when the rate was 26 percent.
Those are just some of the findings from the inaugural "State of Metropolitan America: On the Front Lines of Demographic Transformation," a report released on Sunday by the Brookings Institution, a Washington-based nonprofit research organization. The report examined a preview of this year's census data for demographic trends in the 100 largest metropolitan areas, including trends in higher education.
The pattern of increasing educational attainment was reflected in growing enrollments. In 2000, 34 percent of 18- to 24-year-olds were enrolled in postsecondary institutions, and that rate rose to 41 percent by 2008. Cities throughout New England had higher rates of enrollment, with more than 50 percent of the region's young adults in college in 2008. Washington, D.C., had the largest rate of bachelor's-degree recipients, with 47 percent of its adult population holding those college degrees. In Bakersfield, Calif., the figure was only 15 percent.

Full Story: http://chronicle.com/article/RaceRegion-Often/65467/?sid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en