Coloradans are among the nation’s most highly educated populations, ranking 2nd in the number of citizens with a bachelor’s degree. Our colleges and universities offer a broad range of business, management, engineering and technical degrees, and most graduates remain in Colorado to pursue their careers.

Colorado's 178 school districts had an enrollment of 854,265 students in the 2011-2012 school year. Colorado has the highest percentage of high school graduates achieving ACT and SAT scores in the top 20th percentile for each test. States that score high on this measure produce more high school graduates who are prepared for college.

In the Colorado higher education system, there are over 470 institutions educating approximately 400,000 students. These include publicly supported, private accredited, area technical, and private occupational institutions.

A complete list of all colleges and universities in Colorado can be found here. 

• Colorado ranks 6th highest in the amount of 4th graders proficient or better in reading. Colorado not only has a high percentage of proficient fourth grade readers, it exceeds every other western state in the percentage of fourth graders who read at advanced levels. (The National Center for Education Studies, 2012)
• The Colorado School of Mines ranked 10th on the list of most affordable schools in the U.S.  (Newsweek, 2012)
• Colorado has 24 federally-funded research labs