Description

EDUCUS indicates the highest educational level in the United States that the person had completed at the time of the census.

Comparability — General

EDUCUS is fully comparable at the first digit, but there are differences after that. The pre-1990 samples give number of years of schooling at each level. The 1990-2005 samples only report single years of study within secondary education. The 2010-2020 samples reintroduce single years for basic education. There are some other minor differences in detail in secondary education across samples.

The 2010-2020 samples identify separately persons with high school diplomas and those with a graduate equivalency diploma (GED).

Most importantly, post-secondary study is split into two divergent classifications at the second digit. The 1990-2020 samples identify the acquisition of secondary and post-secondary degrees, while earlier years give only the number of years of schooling. There is no direct correspondence between years of post-secondary study in 1960-1980 and post-secondary degree earned in 1990-2020.

A harmonized international classification of educational attainment is available in EDATTAIN, which imposes a number of compromises to regularize the data across countries. In contrast, EDUCUS retains the full detail on educational attainment from the U.S. samples.

The number of years of schooling completed is available separately in YRSCHOOL, for the samples that have this information.

Universe

Availability

• United States: 1960, 1970, 1980, 1990, 2000, 2005, 2010, 2015, 2020