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Atchison County Grad Rate Rises

By David Meyer

09/03/2012

(KAIR) -- Atchison County has steadily improved their college graduate rate over the past 40 years.

That’s according to a study produced by Mississippi State professor and the Center for Rural Strategies.

(Play Audio) RT: :19

That’s Tim Marema, Vice President of the Center of Rural Strategies, based in Whitesburg, Kentucky.

Their study says in 1970, 8.6 percent of those over 25 years of age had college degrees in Atchison County. By 2010, 22.3 percent of adults here had completed college.

The percentage of adults with college degrees in Atchison County was less than the national average of 27.9 percent in 2010.

The college-educated rate here was less than the Kansas average of 29.3 percent.

The number of adults in the United States with college degrees has nearly tripled since 1970, when only 10.7 percent of adults had graduated from college.

But the percentage of adults with degrees in counties with small cities, such as Atchison County, while increasing, has generally fallen behind the proportion of college-educated residents in urban counties.

Marema explains why he believes this has occurred.

(Audio Continues) RT: :24

In Atchison County, 11.2 percent of adults had some college in 1970, rising to 21.9 percent in 2010. The Kansas average in 2010 was 31.0 percent.

Atchison County had 10,271 adults (those over 25 years of age) in 1970 and 10,412 adults in 2010.

The study also showed only 12.2 percent of the adult population in Atchison County had failed to graduate from high school in 2010.

Nationally 15 percent of adults had not completed high school; in Kansas, the rate was 10.8 percent.

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