20% to 33% is not a 10% increase, if that’s what you’re referring to. That’s a 65% increase.

Even still, over more than two decades, only a ten percentage point increase is still somewhat mind-blowing.

As someone who grew up upper middle class in a wealthier suburban area, I lived in a bubble where the vast majority of people I went to high school with went off to college and got bachelors degrees. To me, it seemed that that was the norm for most Americans, but that's far from reality.

65% increase seems big but this also means only 13% more adult americans are degree holders which seems remarkably paltry to me after almost 40 years of "thou shall go to college" being preached to highschoolers.

College got very expensive. If it hadn’t I’m sure we’d see higher numbers.

I think that depends on if you go out of state or in state. My alma mater has frozen in state tuition for at least 10 years now, maybe longer. Plenty of flagship in state schools are only around 12k-15k a year. In a world where you can now crack 15 an hour unskilled now while living with the parents over the summer you can probably cover a lot of that almost like it was in ye olden times.

Seems like things have been relatively flat for the last decade, but costs are roughly double what they were 30 years ago.

https://www.npr.org/2025/11/20/nx-s1-5600854/college-costs-h...

Only about half of Americans who go to college finish their degree. The saddest part of the college debt crisis are the kids with debt and no degree to pay it off.

GP means a "plus ~10%" not a "times ~1.10" increase.

Apparently nearly half of college students drop out. [1] That gives us most people going to college, but a significant portion not graduating.

[1] https://educationdata.org/college-dropout-rates

stats also show that the average student is now taking longer to graduate, easing towards ~6 years instead of 4

takeaway is probably that a lot of not-really-qualified students are going to 4-year schools and probably shouldn't.