American public education is operated by state and local governments and regulated by the United States Department of Education through restrictions on federal grants. In most states, children are required to attend school from the age of five or six (beginning with kindergarten or first grade) until they turn 18 (generally bringing them through twelfth grade, the end of high school); some states allow students to leave school at 16 or 17.[445]
About 12% of children are enrolled in parochial or nonsectarian private schools. 3.4% of children are homeschooled as of 2012.[446] The U.S. spends more on education per student than any nation in the world,[447] spending an average of $12,794 per year on public elementary and secondary school students in the 2016–2017 school year.[448] Some 80% of U.S. college students attend public universities.[449]
Of Americans 25 and older, 84.6% graduated from high school, 52.6% attended some college, 27.2% earned a bachelor's degree, and 9.6% earned graduate degrees.[450] The basic literacy rate is approximately 99%.[183][451] The United Nations assigns the United States an Education Index of 0.97, tying it for 12th in the world.[452]
The United States has many private and public institutions of higher education. The majority of the world's top universities, as listed by various ranking organizations, are in the U.S.[453][454][455] There are also local community colleges with generally more open admission policies, shorter academic programs, and lower tuition.
In 2018, U21, a network of research-intensive universities, ranked the United States first in the world for breadth and quality of higher education, and 15th when GDP was a factor.[456] As for public expenditures on higher education, the U.S. trails some other OECD (Organization for Cooperation and Development) nations but spends more per student than the OECD average, and more than all nations in combined public and private spending.[457][458] Despite some student loan forgiveness programs in place,[459] student loan debt has increased by 102% in the last decade,[460] and exceeded 1.7 trillion dollars as of 2021.[461][462][463]