Higher Education: An International Perspective
Richard P Phelps2002
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Abstract
Note on the number and size of institutions Note on enrollment and completion ratios Note on expenditure comparisons Note on apprenticeship in the United States and Germany vi 5 INTRODUCTION Higher education is a very important component of most countries' education systems. In most developed countries, over a third of young adults in the typical higher education age range are students. Modern societies now demand large numbers of graduates with knowledge and skills typically developed in higher education institutions, and they compensate those graduates more than in the past for the acquisition of those skills. Indeed, in the most developed countries, higher education has replaced secondary education as the focal point of access to rewarding careers. What has been said of U.S. job seekers is also true for those in most other developed countries: given current technologies in transportation, communication, and trade, if a worker's skills are no better than those of poorly educated, low-paid workers in less-developed countries, that worker is likely to face tough economic pressure. The purpose of this report is to provide a review of higher education systems in selected developed countries and to compare higher education in the United States and other countries. Our "focus group" of countries This report will not be useful if the comparisons across countries are not valid, however. The most basic assumption justifying this effort proposes that observing the country variation in educational indicators can be instructive-instructive by placing our own system in the context of others and instructive in benchmarking the "best practices" of other countries to ours. Ideally, country-level comparisons are most useful among like or competitive countries. Unfortunately for this comparison, there is really no other country quite like the United States on dimensions such as geographical size, population, wealth, and governance structure. We therefore Higher Education: An International Perspective 3 7 a Small: less than 25, 000 square miles; medium: 25,001 to 75,000; large: greater than 75,000. b Small: less than 30 million persons; medium: 30 million to 100 million; large: greater than 100 million.
Key takeaways
- What is "higher education?"
- How does the transition from upper secondary education to higher education compare across countries?
- (Kogan, Large increases in applications to higher education in recent years have led some institutions 74 Higher Education: An International Perspective
- The "expected duration" in higher education for the average 17-year old is lower in Germany and Switzerland than it is in the "general education" countries and France, only because Germany has fewer higher education students per
- Countries above the average line spent more on higher education students, given their level of resources, than the countries below the line.
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