educational attainment

Highest degree earned

Educational attainment is the highest level of schooling a person has completed—high school diploma, bachelor's degree, doctorate, and so on.

The term appears most often in demographic studies, census data, and policy discussions: Educational attainment correlates strongly with lifetime earnings.

It measures credentials obtained, not knowledge gained.

academic

diploma

Academic completion document

PhD · doctorate · associate · thesis · dissertation · commencement · graduation · summa cum laude · magna cum laude · cum laude

credential

certification

Attestation of qualification

certificate · vocational · professional · apprenticeship · trade school · technical · credentialing · journeyman · bar exam · CPA

knowledge

literacy

Ability to read, write

expertise · competency · mastery · fluency · skill acquisition · learning outcomes · critical thinking · subject matter · curriculum · pedagogy

milestone

graduation

Completing academic requirements formally

ceremony · recognition · rite of passage · completion · convocation · conferral · pinning ceremony · hooding · capping · first-generation

funding

scholarship

Educational funding or erudition

tuition · merit-based · financial aid · endowment · Pell Grant · student loan · FAFSA · work-study · stipend · tuition waiver

Categories
Opposites
formal education level

educational attainmentilliteracy

Inability to read

school dropout · functional illiteracy

knowledge acquisition pathway

educational attainmentautodidacticism

Practice of self-instruction

street smarts · on-the-job training · school of hard knocks · life experience · self-education

socioeconomic indicator

educational attainmenteducational inequality

Uneven access to learning

Family

education, educate, instruction, educated, educator, educational, attain, instructive, educating

Familiarity
Top 200,000
Profile
Used worldwide · Timeless · Abstract · Rated G