only 26% of pop. has a 4 year degree!
 

yep..........just caught this little tidbit. only 26% of U.S. population has a 4 year degree. way under many other industrialized nations. corporate america scrambling to find degreed individuals to fill positions.

why as the greatest nation on the planet do we underscore the value of education?

And it hasn't been of any discernable benefit to all of that 26%.

Where'd you get that statistic? I thought it was less than 20%.

Re: only 26% of pop. has a 4 year degree!
 

Wipro exec was on CNBC this morning. He states India graduates 400k engineers each year vs 75k in the US. Ouch.

Re: only 26% of pop. has a 4 year degree!
 

when i was in college, back in 96, that was the stat too...about 1/4 of the population.

it's getting very expensive , with tuitions over 100K for 4 years.

No surprise:
0–14 years: 20.4% (male 31,095,847; female 29,715,872)
15–64 years: 67.2% (male 100,022,845; female 100,413,484)
65 years and over: 12.5% (male 15,542,288; female 21,653,879)

I don't understand those stats, mike.

Population breakdown by those age groups?

I believe Mike was posting our population broken into age/gender groups.

The stats above show that at a minimum, 20% of the pop (0-14yrs) can't have a 4yr degree. If you look at the ages (15-20yrs) that will rule out another percentage. Then look to the over 65yrs bracket, when less of the population got 4yr degrees and the will rule out some more.

I wonder what the percentage is for working age individuals, say 22-65yrs?

saw this tidbit the other day on i think, yahoo.

me a conservative...................LMFAO!

i'll put my flame suit on for this one........what would you call a ............native of arizona, college educated(cum laude), off road racer(bikes buggies trucks), p-car owner,scuba diver for 33 years, worked for porsche when younger, beer drinking, CCW carrying, own too many guns, married once-2 kids,divorced once, aerospace machine background, pro-abortion,war-mongering hawk, own home, plays drums alot while drinking excessive beers at excessive volume, while breaking excessive sticks, raised by staff sarge army purdue eng. degree father, mother who was also had degree and spoke 5 languages., animal lover, hunter/fisherman!

hell i dont EVEN KNOW WHAT I AM?????

my voter card says i'm with the GOP! a freeking elephant!

Those numbers add up to around 300 million, which is roughly the US population. I'm assuming those are the current rough breakdown of age groups.

So, 20.4% of the population isn't even old enough to have a college degree yet.

And some of the 15-64 (the 15-20 year old portion of it) also is going to be too young.

And those 65 and older - a lot of those aren't going to have college educations because it wasn't as common in those days, they were in the military, etc. etc. The number of college degrees among 65+ year olds isn't really relevant to the discussion, because most are retired.

So that's like 35-40% of the population. Given that chunk of the total population, if 26% of the total population has a 4 year degree, that's pretty impressive.

Oh, a DRUMMER!! That explains it!

Comparing the population of India, assuming the 75K is accurate, that's equivalent to over 187,000 engineers in America. Second, India is over producing engineers requiring them to look outside of India for employment. And, third, India is playing catch-up, still, and would need more engineers per population, though less than they're creating, to accomplish that.

Parchment baby!

Sheepskin baby! Anthropologists are going to know about my degree in 1000 years. Yours will just be dust. ;)

I realize this is a outflyer, but what about folks like me who hold jobs that require masters or phds, but don't actually have a degree at all? Got my current job, it required a masters in educational technology, got it on experience alone. Freaked HR out to hire a 27 year old that had a documented 16 years experience programming, etc. tho :) And I do have a degree now, but it is "just" an AS in systems ...

Eh, I don't have one and do okay.

Though I am considering doing an easy Internet/Corespondence one to just meet the base requirement to add to my experience to apply for an MBA program.

There's also a lot of people who don't have degrees, but for whom that was not a negative. My folks, for instance, live in a very ritzy area (average house probably $3 million). It's amazing how many of their neighbors don't have college degrees, in fact, most don't. They are mostly "self-made" entrepreneurial types, who were trained in a trade, then went out on their own. Furniture maker, real estate, manufacturing widgets, etc. etc. etc. They learned it then ended up owning the company.

Where, on the other hand, there are millions of people with 4 year sociology degrees toiling away doing meaningless work for $30K per year.