Almanac 2009: Sources & Notes

These sources and notes explain data for the individual 50 states and the District of Columbia as well as summary data for the United States.

The figures are comparable from state to state and, in all cases, were the latest available at press time. The time covered by the statistics varies from item to item.

The U.S. Department of Education typically releases statistics from the surveys of colleges and universities a few years after collecting the data. The latest figures on