BY RYAN VALENTINE
The level of education an individual completes separates them from others in the real world. Being successful in our society requires some form of completed education. Data on educational attainment solves the question on what the highest grade of school or highest degree someone has received. According to census.gov, this question was first implemented in the 1990 Decennial Census and changed in the Current Population Survey in 1992.
A data table provided by census.gov shows the educational attainment of the population up to 75 years of age and over for 2014. Looking more specifically at males and females between 18 to 24 years of age, we are able to find out who is receiving the highest level of education.
A lot of things can be said about the data that was presented.
Women have a higher rate of receiving a degree compared to men. The number of Master’s degrees earned for women compared to men was significantly higher than other degree’s they’ve earned in 2014. However, there were more women in 2014 who didn’t earn a college degree compared to men. Does this affect the working world in our society? Is the margin of difference so small for our population to even begin seeing a change?
On the other hand, more men ages 18 to 24 graduated from high school compared to women ages 18 to 24. This data can attest to the amount of men who choose to pursue college after graduation. The case may be that women ultimately have a greater chance of success in receiving a degree even though there’s more women who go to college and don’t receive any degrees. The cause of this is that more women are going to college right out of high school compared to men.
Furthermore, census.gov provided the same data table for 2010. Overall, the number of degrees received for both men and women as a whole have increased as each year passes. This is good news for education in general, as it’s more important to males and females to pursue an education after they finish high school.
See the Education Attainment Tables to view the data.