Colleges are hiring more people again, according to data from the U.S. Department of Education.
As of November, the department reported that the average American college is hiring more students every year than it did before the recession.
More specifically, the average number of students attending colleges has risen each year since 2009.
In 2016, the number of new applicants rose by 8.7 percent.
It’s unclear whether the increased demand for students is just a fluke or a sign of more students graduating.
However, the increase is significant, especially for historically underrepresented groups such as people of color, women, and LGBT students.
More than half of colleges now offer an associate degree or higher in associate’s, bachelor’s, or master’s programs, and the percentage of people with associate’s degrees is now nearly triple the percentage before the Great Recession.
In the 2020s, that percentage grew by almost 17 percent.
So far in 2021, that number has grown by nearly 30 percent.
In fact, the last time the U
