When it comes to degree attainment, we spent much of the last century picking low-hanging fruit—increasing educational access for women, minorities, immigrants, and lower-income students who had been kept out of college for arbitrary and unjust reasons. We now do an excellent job making sure that everyone has access to higher education, continuing to lead the world by a wide margin in the percentage of high school graduates who spend some time in college. If we’ve fallen behind in awarding degrees, it’s because we also lead the world, again by a wide margin, in the percentage of college students who drop out.
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