What Does Higher Education in the Bay Area Look Like Post-Pandemic?
The Bay Area has one of the most highly educated populations in the nation with 49% of people over the age of 25 holding a bachelor’s degree (well above the national average of 33%). The region’s higher educational institutions rank within the top nationwide in expenditure on science and engineering R&D, and graduates from our universities started almost 3,000 companies between 2009 and 2017. But the COVID-19 pandemic has shed new light on the many challenges facing higher education, including growing racial disparities in educational attainment, decreasing levels of international enrollment and falling productivity in R&D fields due to remote work. The Bay Area Council Economic Institute has released another chapter in its series for the recently launched Bay Area Council Economic Profile, this time looking at data trends showing how the virus is reshaping higher education in the Bay Area.
