College-Educated Immigrants in the United States

In “College-Educated Immigrants in the United States,” Kira Olsen-Medina and Jeanne Batalova for the Migration Policy Institute find that “[f]acilitated by changing immigration policies and global educational trends, the number of immigrants with higher levels of education in the United States has grown rapidly since 1990: The college-educated immigrant population increased 87 percent between 1990 and 2000, 57 percent between 2000 and 2010, and a further 38 percent between 2010 and 2018 (see Figure 1). The native-born, college-educated population also has grown, but at a slower pace over the same periods: by 33 percent, 26 percent, and 24 percent, respectively. The faster growth of the high-skilled immigrant population means that their share of all college-educated adults in the United States also has increased over the last three  decades, from 10 percent in 1990 to 17 percent in 2018.” (bold added).