Quality education for all: more than just a financial challenge

Published Tuesday, September 09, 2008 12:46 PM

Demand for education is constantly rising. Upper secondary education is becoming the norm in most OECD countries. And most students who graduate from high school now aim to go to university. Back in 1995, only 37% of high-school graduates went into university-level programmes. Now, it's 57%, a significant jump. This “hunger for knowledge” is testing the policy and budgetary capacity of governments.

Despite big rises in spending, including increased private sector funding, expenditure on tertiary education cannot always keep up with increased demand. The result can be a bottleneck in terms of a country's economic performance. Already, there are more skilled jobs needing to be filled in OECD economies than there are people with high-level education and training qualifications to fill them. 

Solving this challenge is not only a matter of increasing financial resources. It is also a question of optimising policy choices and of improving the management capacity of institutions, for example by making their financial management more efficient, more strategic and globally oriented. Countries can make very different choices to improve the efficiency of education, juggling with salary levels, the number of hours students spend in the classroom, the amount of teaching time required and the size of classes. At the tertiary level, moves to improve efficiency are needed too. Improved guidance mechanisms for students moving from secondary to tertiary-level programmes, for example, could help them make more informed choices and so increase graduation rates and ease pressures on spending. It may seem surprising, but some 31% of students in OECD countries, on average, do not complete the tertiary studies for which they enrol.  

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by Cynthia Coutu
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Comments

# Roger Hildebrandt said on Monday, September 15, 2008 10:37 AM

As a German, I wondered about the low percentage of graduates proceeding to university after college in comparison to OECD average and esp. countries like Australia and Russia.

My first impression was that Germany should really improve its tertiary and secondary school system or the incentives for college graduates to proceed to university.

Having thought about it from the perspective of the graduates though, the low percentage of students could also be explained through the fact, that the need to study in order to achieve good career perspectives as well as a fair social status in Germany is just not as predominant as in other countries.

One explanation for this phenomenon is obviously the excellent 3 year apprenticeship, which leads to a degree that most of the SME entrepreneurs are fully satisfied with. Besides this degree gives the successful graduates the opportunity to enrol themselves at a university, too and quench their thirst for extra education.

Against this background I think that the mere numbers stated in the OECD graphics are just one indicator for a phenomenon, which is manifold and therefore needs additional explanation as well as background information to avoid misleading interpretation.

Best regards from Berlin, Germany

R. Hildebrandt

# Andreas Schleicher (OECD) said on Wednesday, October 01, 2008 7:12 PM

You are certainly right that universities are not the only route to better employment and social status. However, they are a very powerful one. Indicator A9 in Education at a Glance 2008 (at dx.doi.org/.../401781614508 ) shows that the earnings advantage of a university degree, as compared with secondary education, has risen from 33% in 1997 to 64% in 2006. By contrast, the earnings advantage associated with a dual system apprenticeship is only 12% over a secondary qualification.