# For EDUC, does "3 years of college" mean "some college, no degree"?

**URL:** <https://forum.ipums.org/t/for-educ-does-3-years-of-college-mean-some-college-no-degree/1382>\
**Category:** USA\
**Created:** [August 9, 2016, 7:06pm UTC](https://forum.ipums.org/t/for-educ-does-3-years-of-college-mean-some-college-no-degree/1382 "2016-08-09T19:06:00Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![jjesunlee](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/f6c823/32.png) [@jjesunlee](https://forum.ipums.org/u/jjesunlee)\
**Post date:** [August 9, 2016, 7:06pm UTC](https://forum.ipums.org/t/for-educ-does-3-years-of-college-mean-some-college-no-degree/1382/1 "2016-08-09T19:06:00Z")

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For EDUC, does “3 years of college” mean “some college, no degree”?

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**Author:** ![grover](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex019/user_avatar/forum.ipums.org/grover/32/5_2.png) [@grover](https://forum.ipums.org/u/grover)\
**Post date:** [August 16, 2016, 6:28pm UTC](https://forum.ipums.org/t/for-educ-does-3-years-of-college-mean-some-college-no-degree/1382/2 "2016-08-16T18:28:00Z")

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Degree completion was not collected as part of the Census until 1990 so the equivalency of “3 years of college” and “some college, no degree” can not be determined for certain. Some researchers certainly treat these codes as equivalent or group together other like codes, but as you can see from the [questionnaire text for 1980](https://usa.ipums.org/usa-action/variables/educ#questionnaire_text_section), college experience was only collected as number of years completed.

I hope this helps.