page_title: Education of immigrants in the United States
section_title: Overview
hierarchical_section_title: Education of immigrants in the United States / Overview
caption_attribution_description: English: Educational Attainment for Population 25+ by Immigration Status
context_page_description: Immigrants make up about 13% of the US population, about 42 million out of a total population of 318.9 million citizens in 2017. First and second generation immigrant children have become the fastest-growing segment of the United States population. Compared to the native-born population, young adults aged 15–34 are significantly over-represented in new immigrants. Children and immigrants ages 35–44 are in similar proportion to native-born Americans, but older people are under-represented in new immigrants. The Supreme Court of the United States ruled in 1982 in Plyler v. Doe that states cannot deny students an education on account of their immigration status, allowing students to gain access to the United States' public schooling system. Further, the 1974 Supreme Court case Lau v. Nichols prohibited discrimination based on race or national origin and determined that school systems in the United States must provide English language instruction. The Every Student Succeeds Act signed by President Obama in 2015 mandates that English proficiency standards that hold state programs accountable for the performance of EL programs.
context_section_description: By 2000, 23% of scientists with a PhD in the U.S. were immigrants, including 40% of those in engineering and computers. Roughly a third of the United States' college and universities graduate students in STEM fields are foreign nationals—in some states it is well over half of their graduate students.
  In 2016, current school enrollment figures show that immigrants lag behind native-born populations in attending pre-school and K-12 education, but they proportionally outpace native-born populations in attending colleges or universities.
  While the trend is changing with changes in demographics, immigrants tend to be less educated than their native-born counterparts. They are significantly more likely to have less than a high school education, yet they are also slightly more likely to hold an advanced degree. Given the high education enrollment rates of immigrant populations, though, this is very likely to change in the next decade. By creating special visa programs, the Immigration Act of 1990 has increased the percentage of immigrants with a college education to about 29%. However, this number is only slightly more than 10% of the overall population. Further, the US Department of Education estimates that "over 4.7 million foreign born individuals enrolled in pre-kindergarten to postsecondary education, representing 6% of the total student population. Another 20 million students are the children of foreign born parents."
caption: Educational attainment for population 25+ by immigration status[1]
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