Maryland Brief 2012

Maryland is a national leader in educational attainment; the state ranks fourth in the United States in the percentage of adults who have earned at least an associate degree. Even so, Maryland aspires to improve its performance. By 2025, the state hopes to increase to 55% the share of its adult population with at least an associate degree.

To reach this goal, Maryland must improve the performance of higher education. Based on trends in degree production and projected population growth, Maryland needs to increase its annual production of associate and bachelor’s degrees by 5.1 percent per year so that by 2020, 55 percent of its workforce (ages 25 to 64) will hold at least an associate degree, which is the level of attainment of the best-performing nations. By 2018, projections suggest that 66 percent of all jobs in Maryland will require at least some postsecondary education or training.