But on page 16 of the PDF doc, there's a chart showing the "Percentage of 25- to 64-year-olds with an Associate Degree or Higher, 2007" across 36 OECD (Organization for Economic and Co-operative Development) countries, which really caught my eye. Rather surprisingly, there's Canada sitting at the # 2 position, behind only the Russian Federation! In fact, here's how the top 10 break down:
- Russian Federation (54.0%)
- Canada (48.3%)
- Israel (43.6%)
- Japan (41.0%)
- New Zealand (41.0%)
- United States (40.3%)
- Finland (36.4%)
- Korea (34.6%)
- Norway (34.2%)
- Australia (33.7%)
On a more sobering note, what does it say about the state of education in the early 21st century that the majority of countries in this group of advanced nations have less than 1/3 of their adult population holding post-secondary degrees? The United Kingdom, for example, sits at 31.8%; France manages to educate only 26.8% of their grown ups; Greece (the home of entitlement) weighs in at 22.7%; and Italy barely registers at 13.6%! The OECD average is a mere 27.5%, which is truly depressing. At a time when low-skilled jobs are disappearing entirely or moving to third world countries, it can't be good that so many leading nations are producing so few degree-holders.
By the way, on page 17 of that report, they look at 25- to 34-year-olds with Associate Degrees or higher, and Canada does even better: we finish 1st, with 55.8%! That's a very good sign, since those folks represent the short- to medium-term future of this great land of ours!
1 comment:
It is an interesting goal, context is important to identifying how hard it will be (page wouldn't load for me so I can't see if they give proper context):
ex: if the current US 40% rate is evenly distributed across all ages 25-64b and 0% population growth (obviously inaccurate), then the top 15 ages will be out of scope by 2025, and 15 new ages are added. Also assuming the ones currently have near 0% increase in completion rate (a bit low as there are some who graduate with degrees after 25) those new entries to the pool would need a 79% completion rate to get the average to 55%.
Now if we more realistically assume completion rates are on a curve, with 25-35 year old being MUCH higher than 55-65. The increased rate for 25 year olds need not be anywhere near so high. If a 7% spread is assumed (as Canada has from your data), then the rate needed drops to 67.8%. Which is still challenging.
Population growth, and graduation dates over 35 would both reduce the needed target.
I'd have to assume they plan on augmenting the completion rate of those currently 25-49, as achieving a 20% average increase to new high-school graduate Post secondary completion rate seems pretty unlikely given the assumed 47%, unless you significantly lower the challenge to getting a degree (which would defeat the intent of the plan anyways).
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