<p>Hi!</p>
<p>Can anyone help me figure out how many undergraduate college students there are in the US? </p>
<p>Thanks!</p>
<p>i think the total number of college students in america is around 16 million. however, some 2.5 million of these are graduate students. so... 13.5 million? this includes students at two year colleges... and is totally from memory.</p>
<p>The Chronicle of Higher Education says there were 16.7 million college students in the U.S. in 2005, 86% of them undergraduate.</p>
<p>I have my doubts as to accuracy though, as, last time I looked, they didn't even list the largest undergraduate school in the country (University of Phoenix), whcih has more than 225,000 total students.</p>
<p>Can you expand on your comment about the Chronicle? What Chronicle issue are you looking at? From the most recent almanac, I found a 16.7 million figure, but that was for 2003 and reflects the October 2003 census survey, not DOE data. DOE data for 2005 was a projection, and was 17.4 million. Neither figure says that for-profit colleges were excluded.</p>
<p>I don't have the most recent almanac, so your number is likely correct. However, I did look up the list of schools with the largest headcounts, and Phoenix wasn't even listed, so I wonder(ed) what other schools are not listed as well.</p>
<p>I can't speak for prior issues, but U of Phoenix is listed in the most recent almanac--the "online campus" makes the list, because the total is something like 40,000 or more. The individual campuses are apparently counted individually, so they wouldn't appear on a "largest" list. This is consistent with what the Chronicle does with other multi-campus institutions.</p>
<p>But at any rate, I suppose it's a good reminder that the source is important because the Chronicle gets data however it can--but always tells the reader where it came from. I don't know the wording of the household survey that the census bureau used. They may have asked households to NOT report for-profit enrollment, but if so that decision would be unrelated to the way other agencies (or the Chronicle itself) may choose to report enrollment.</p>
<p>For run-on sentences, I really can't be beat.</p>