Investment in education is investment in people and in a nation's future. And it is also about money!
"The cost to individuals and society of young people leaving school without a qualification keeps rising," stated OECD Secretary-General Angel GurrĂa in connection with the OECD's annual Education at a Glance report.
According to this report, the global economic crisis has proved much tougher for people without university degrees. Unemployment rates in 2009 among university graduates stood at 4.4% versus 11.5% for those people who did not complete high school. Current graduation trends indicate that 82% of young people today will complete upper secondary education, but those who don't will face greater challenges entering and staying in the job market. Over 50% of 15- to 19-year-olds who are not in school are unemployed or out of the labor force.
Governments therefore need to invest in education. Better educated people are less likely to need unemployment benefits or welfare assistance, and pay more tax when they enter the job market. A person with a tertiary education will pay back an average $91,000 in income taxes and social contributions over his working life, over and above what the government pays for his degree. Education pays for individuals, too: the gross earnings premium for an individual with a tertiary degree exceeds $300,000 for men and $200,000 for women across the OECD countries, over their working lives.
The Education at a Glance report, which for the first time includes an analysis of education systems in Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Russia and South Africa, shows the global picture is changing. At present, one in three university-educated retirees resides in the U.S., but only one in five university graduates entering the workforce does. Conversely, while only 5% of adults in China have a tertiary degree, because of its population size, the country now ranks second behind the U.S. and ahead of Japan in the number of people with tertiary attainment among OECD and G20 countries. China (including Hong Kong) also contributes 19.5% of all international students from non-OECD countries.
OECD Division Head Andreas Schleicher points out: "The cross-country correlation is high (+0.51) between the proportion of students performing below proficiency level 3 in PISA and expected years not in education and unemployed or out of the labor force. If we look at the percentage of 15-29 year- olds not in education and unemployed or out of the labour force, the correlation with the PISA reading Score is -0.37, and for the proportion of students performing below proficiency level 3 in PISA, the correlation is +0.35."
Other findings of the report showed that OECD countries spent 6.1% of their GDP on education in 2008. Between 2000 and 2008, education expenditure increased at a faster rate than GDP in 25 of the 32 countries for which data are available. Between 2000 and 2009, teachers' salaries increased in real terms in most countries. The largest increases, of well over 50%, were seen in the Czech Republic, Estonia and Turkey. Women make up the majority of students and graduates in almost all OECD countries, and largely dominate in the fields of education, health and welfare, humanities and arts. Young women are more likely than men to finish upper secondary education in every OECD country except for Germany and Switzerland. Men dominate in engineering, manufacturing and construction. For more information: Education at a Glance 2011: OECD Indicators and
The Global Search for Education
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I had a thought the other night while working with my 6 year old daughter and 5 year old son on handwriting.
We spend a significant amount of time and money teaching children how to write (penmenship). Is anyone aware of a discussion in acedemia about not doing that? After all at some point the Egyptians stopped teaching people how to write in hyrogliphics and at some point native Americans stopped teaching people how to use smoke signals.
If you think about how little you use handwriting now, and the speed at which technology (iphones, e-mail, the computer, voice recognition) is moving, will my 5 and 6 year olds ever need (or even want) to use handwriting?
Just curious about the reasons for the emphasis on handwriting in education, when even now (much less 5 years from now), the applications of it are incredibly limited.
My understanding is that still makes a significant dent in the unemployment issue, although the majority of the kids still face the challenge of getting work.
The quality of college student bodies is also determined more by how they are selected than by the quality of the instruction at the institution. There are some incredibly dedicated and talented teachers at technical institutions, while some Nobel prize winners at "Name" private universities are incredibly bad instructors.
The cost of college/university education is a problem, but one that can still be managed. I expect a migration to mixed on-line and in-person classes and testing to replace many of the very large lecture hall format classes now done. This can be done cheaply. The institution would be moving more to a credentialing role, verifying the student's mastery of the material in question. Only advanced classes would rely upon the smaller in-person classes.