My favorite fake statistic in this article is "and nearly half have a college degree." They're trying to frame that paragraph to say the people are educated, and if you read it quickly it comes off that way, instead of "most of these people only have a high school diploma."
You left off the other half of the sentence that makes it more clear that there are some highly educated people in this cohort: " and nearly 4 in 10 a postgraduate degree."
I believe it means 4 in 10 of the college educated. I don’t remember the exact line. I’d have to go back and check. However I vouched for your dead comment and wanted to comment quickly.