Lesser Higher Ed?
Good thing for our friends over at School Me, who never let any education news slip through their fingers--even when it appears in the British press. Don't get me wrong, I read the British papers too. But, understandably distracted by this and this, I missed this new report on higher education access and participation worldwide.
The bottom line of the report is that other countries are making progress and closing the gap with America (and in some cases eliminating it) when it comes to quality of higher education, access to higher education, and higher education completion. While there are many education stories that warrant their doom and gloom billing, I'm not sure this one deserves to be on the marquee.
The study notes that now the U.S. is only one of nine countries with more than 60% of its young adults participating in higher education. Who are the other eight countries you ask: Iceland (83%) New Zealand (81%), Sweden (80%), Finland (73%), Poland (70%), Hungary (69%), Australia (68%) and Norway (68%). In other words, not a single other G8 country. That does not mean that countries like Japan, Korea, France, and Canada aren't closing ground on us (they are) but this is not exactly the same as when our 10th graders finished 24th out of 29 nations. All of this, of course, does not mean that the U.S. doesn't need to do a better job of increasing curricular alignment and higher ed affordability so that participation and retention rates can increase but it's always good to retain some degree of perspective in all of this.