The room for higher-education growth is in the economic bottom-half

A new report says that the greatest potential for growing higher-education is in the bottom half of the US economy.  I found the below graph from the report pretty startling — I had heard that the US already had a very high percentage of higher-education degrees among its citizens, but this graph suggests that we’ve got quite a long way to go.

President Obama has set a goal for the United States to have the highest proportion of college graduates in the world by 2020.

The report, “Developing 20/20 Vision on the 2020 Degree Attainment Goal: The Threat of Income-Based Inequality in Education,”argues that the “nation’s failure to keep pace with other countries in educational attainment among 25- to 34-year-old adults can be largely traced to our inability to adequately educate individuals from families in the bottom half of the income distribution.”

If all Americans attained bachelor’s degree by age 24 at the same rate as do individuals from the top half of the income distribution, the United States would now have the highest share of bachelor’s degree recipients in the world, the report says.

via To Raise Educational Levels, Focus on Income-Based Inequality, Report Urges – Students – The Chronicle of Higher Education.