Anyone want to help me research something?

[Jenny in Florida]

Following a conversation I was having with my family this evening, I was trying to find some statistics on the number of people in the U.S. each year who earn a bachelor's degree while under the age of 19.

 

I've tried hitting Google with every variation in wording  I can think of, thus far to no avail.

 

I found this table from the Census Bureau [ http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2012/tables/12s0281.pdf ], but it doesn't show the number of graduates, just the number of 14 - 17-year-old students. There's no way I can find to tell from these numbers how many of these students are enrolled full time and/or are on track to graduate before turning 19. (Presumably, it would be only or mostly those who were freshmen by age 14 and who went straight through in four years who would finish degrees while still 18.)

 

Wikipedia has a list of early entrance programs, but the majority of those don't take students until at least their junior year of high school, meaning most would be at least 16 when they enroll and more like 20 when they graduate. Plus, I know that some significant number of early college enrollees aren't involved in one of these formal programs. And, of course, while I can add up the number of students accepted to these kinds of programs each year, not all of those students will actually graduate at all, let alone within the time frame in which I am interested.

 

I have found a lot of articles about individual students who have earned degrees while in their teens. None of the ones I've read, however, give any statistics about how common this is.

 

And it looks like there was a study done by researchers at Johns Hopkins (I think, but I may have confused it with another program), but the statistics were compiled in the late 1990s and looked only at their own graduates.

 

Anyway, this is purely curiosity on my part. It's not something I've ever thought about much (despite the fact that I have one of those early graduates in my family). But it came up in conversation, and now I'd love to have the stats. So, if anyone has any leads for me or wants to fire up their Googling fingers and see what they can come up with, I'd appreciate it!

[Mergath]

I don't know if you could even find the statistics for something like that.  You could probably find the stats for each school, but I doubt anyone has gone through and compiled the stats for that age group for the country as a whole.  I did look, and I couldn't find anything either.