State Overview -- Educational Attainment of Persons Age 25 Years and Over 1990-2000
Educational Attainment of Persons Age 25 Years and Over 1990-2000
According to the 2000 Population Census the educational attainment of Missourians age 25 and over improved significantly during the 1990s. As indicated in Table 1 in 1990 only 73.9 percent of Missourians had graduated from high school while the 2000 Census reports that 81.3 percent of Missourians had graduated from high school.
Table 1
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Because of the combination of greater high school completion and population growth the number of Missouri adults having at least a high school education increased from 2,433,211 in 1990 to 2,955,811 in 2000 - an increase of 21.5 percent. That is significant considering that Missouri population increased by only 9.3 percent during the 1990s. It is clear that the Missouri adult population of 2000 is more educated than the adult population of 1990.
Changes in Post-secondary Education Attainment 1990-2000
One of the most significant educational attainment trends in Missouri during the 1990s was the number and percent of Missouri adults who attained education beyond high school. In 1990 there were 1,090,940 Missourians who had completed their education with a high school diploma. The number of adult Missourians in that educational attainment category increased to 1,189,670 in 2000 - an increase of 9.0 percent.
But, as reported in Table 1, there were 1,342,271 adult Missourians who had attained some education beyond high school in 1990. The 2000 Census reports that there were 1,766,141 adult Missourians having achieved at least some education beyond high school - an increase of 31.6 percent during the 1990s. The percent of Missouri adults with education beyond high school increased from 40.7 percent in 1990 to 48.6 percent in 2000.
An important trend during the 1990s was an increase in the number of Missouri adults who achieved an Associate degree (community college) and those who had attained some college education although they did not graduate. Table 1 reports that there were 756,510 Missouri adults in 1990 that had either attended college but had not graduated or had attained an Associate degree. By 2000 the number of Missourians in those two educational attainment categories had increased to 981,665 - an increase of 29.8 percent. Enrollment trends among Missouri community colleges and other higher education institutions during the 1990s show widespread increases in the number of part-time and nontraditional students.
Again, as shown in Table 1, the percent of Missouri adults having graduated from college increased from 17.8 percent in 1990 to 21.6 percent in 2000. Although that is a significant percentage change, increase in the actual number of college graduates from 1990 to 2000 is somewhat more impressive. In 1990 there were 585,761 adults who had attained a college education or beyond, but by 2000 there were 784,476 adults having a college education or more - an increase of 33.9 percent!
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Decline in Adult Population Not having Completed High School 1990-2000
In 1990 Missouri stood out among states in the Midwest in the percent of adults who had not completed high school. In 1990 there were 64 Missouri counties in which more than 30 percent of the adult population had not graduated from high school (Table 2). In contrast, some Midwest states had no counties in that category. Importantly the number of Missouri counties falling in that educational attainment category declined to 17 by 2000 (Map 1).
Most likely a major contributor to that decline was the very significant decline in the number of Missourians not having attended high school at all. In 1990 there were 380,613 Missouri adults who had not attended high school, a number that dropped to 237,618 in 2000 - a decline of nearly 40 percent. Most of the adult population who did not attend high school have been older people who had completed whatever education they were to achieve by 1950 or earlier. The size of that older population cohort is continuing to decline.
Although there was a dramatic decline during the 1990s in number of persons never having attended high school, there was a much more modest decline in the number who attended but did not complete high school. There were 477,755 who had attended, but did not high school in 1990 - a number that declined to 441,477 in 2000. That is a decline of only 7.6 percent, very modest compared with changes in the other educational attainment categories included in Table 1. One reason is that Missouri, in comparison with a number of other midwestern states, has had a large high school dropout rate during the past two decades.
In following sections educational attainment data and analysis will be presented by county and by region in the following categories: (1) adults not having completed high school; (2) adults having no education beyond a high school diploma; (3) adults having some post-secondary education but not having earned a degree, and, (4) adults having earned a college degree and those with graduate or professional degrees.
This file last modified Thursday May 07, 2009, 16:10:58
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