A new study by the Department of Education offers up a statistical picture of young-adult life in the wake of the Great Recession.
What are today’s young adults really like? For those who’ve spent too much time gazing into the dark recesses of Thought Catalog or obsessing over “Girls,” the Department of Education has a new report that offers up some enlightening answers.
In the spring of 2002, the government’s researchers began tracking a group of roughly 15,000 high school sophomores—most of whom would be roughly age 27 today—with the intention of following them through early adulthood. Like myself, many of those students graduated college in 2008, just in time to grab a front-row seat for the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the economic gore fest that ensued. In 2012, the government’s researchers handed their subjects an enormous survey about their lives in the real world. Here, I’ve pulled together the most interesting findings.
(One important note: I’ve shorthanded this group as “today’s 27-year-olds.” But again, not all of the study participants are precisely that age.)
1. More than 84 percent of today’s 27-year-olds have some college education. Only a third have a bachelor’s degree.
Ever hear someone say that “a college degree is the new high school diploma”? It’s not really true. But getting at least a bit of higher education is now the norm.
2. Asians are far more likely to have a bachelor’s degree than blacks, Hispanics, or whites.
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Complete text and more charts linked here.
