A city of higher education.
A city challenged to educate its own.
Philadelphia is home to more than 83 world-class institutions of higher learning, making it easy to attract many of the world's best and brightest. But when it comes to educating our city's own residents, Philadelphia has faced and is facing considerable challenges.
Current figures show that only 20 percent of Philadelphians have college degrees. Also, consider the fact that over 141,000 adults completed a year's worth of college credits but did not graduate, including 80,000 prime working age adults, ages 25–45. At the high school level, we see that 25 percent of our city's residents did not graduate, and one in five students ages 16–24 are not working or in school. The most accurate predictors of educational success at all levels are the education level of mothers and family income.
Philadelphia's low levels of educational attainment present significant challenges to our city's economic and social growth.
Today's economy demands more complex problem-solving skills, and increasingly, college credentials. Yet even at a basic level our city struggles. Over 60 percent of our city's residents are considered low literate, making it hard for them to succeed in higher education, compete for jobs, and advance in employment.
So if our youth aren't in school, where are they and what are they doing? If adults never finished school, how can they start down a career path and help their children do the same? The question before us is, how committed are we to growing our own?
Data & Publications
It could go either way.
Read A Tale of Two Cities — a report portraying Philadelphia’s human capital challenge as latent economic opportunity.
» Download the report
» Spanish version
