(FORTUNE Magazine) – Young Americans are no longer getting better educated than their elders, according to the Census Bureau. As of March 1987 -- the most recent period available -- people age 25 to 34 completed a median of 12.9 years of school -- no better than in the mid-1970s. Equally discouraging, racial differences in education are about as wide as they were ten years ago. And although 25- to 29-year-old women are now as well educated as their male counterparts, that's only because fewer men are completing college.