One In Four U.S. Residents Attends School Education is not just our future. It is very much a part of our daily lives with more than one in four people in the US aged 3 and older -- 72 million people -- enrolled in school in 2000. Eight million children were enrolled in nursery school or kindergarten and 33 million in elementary and junior high in October 2000. Sixteen million students attended high schools and 15 million attended college. A New Baby Boom In 2000, the number of students enrolled in elementary, junior high, and high school (49 million) matched the previous record set in 1970 when the baby-boom children were in school. Much of the growth in enrollment has been driven by an increase in births that took place between 1981 and 1994 as women born during the baby boom reached their peak childbearing years. Immigration has been another factor contributing to growing enrollment. Among school-aged children, 19 percent had at least one foreign-born parent, and 5 percent of all students in grades 1-12 were foreign-born themselves. High School Graduation Rates Improving By 2000, 84 percent of all men and women aged 25 and older had completed high school. The youngest of these - those aged 25 to 29 - were even more likely to have graduated: 87% of men and 89 percent of women. Among White non-Hispanics, 88 percent were high school graduates, surpassing the record high reached in 1999. The percentage of Blacks aged 25 or more who were high school graduates also reached a record high in 2000 at 79 percent, as the difference between White and Black high school graduation rates narrowed from 16 percent in 1989 to about 10 percent in 2000. In 2000, 86 percent of Asians and Pacific Islanders held a high school diploma or better. The Hispanic population was less likely than other groups to have completed high school. In 2000, 57 percent of Hispanics aged 25 and older were high school graduates - a significant improvement over the 1989 rate of 51 percent. Greater Diversity on College Campuses The race and ethnic composition of college students has shifted during the last two decades. In 1979, 84 percent of students were White non-Hispanic, 10 percent were Black, and few students were of other races. By 2000, Asians and Pacific Islanders accounted for 7 percent of college enrollment, Black or African American students accounted for 14 percent of the students, and Hispanic enrollment grew from 4 percent of college students in 1979 to 9 percent in 2000. In 2000, almost 12 percent of all college students were foreign-born. More College Graduates The percentage of young adults (those aged 25 to 29) who had completed a bachelor's degree was 29 percent in 2000, compared with 28 percent in 1999 and 27 percent in 1998. In 2000, this included 30 percent of young women and 28 percent of young men. Among all adults aged 25 or more, the situation was reversed: 28 percent of men had completed a bachelor's degree or more, compared with 24 percent of women. Comparing by race, Asians and Pacific Islanders have the greatest proportion of college graduates: among those aged 25 and older, 44 percent held a college degree in 2000. In contrast, 28 percent of White non-Hispanics and 17 percent of Blacks in this age group were college graduates. The percentage of Hispanics that held a bachelor's degree or higher in 2000 was 11 percent.

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