Editor’s note: This article was first published in September 2014; the ranking uses OECD data published that year, with figures from around 2012. The percentages, the education spending figure and Spain’s unemployment rate of around 24% are from that time.
The website 24/7 Wall St has compiled data published by the OECD to show the 10 countries with the highest share of adults holding a university degree. The ranking puts Russia in first place, with more than half (53.4%) of its adult population having a university education, while China has the lowest rate of university graduates, with just 4% of its adults.
The countries with the most university education tend to be those where spending on education per inhabitant is also highest (with a few exceptions); the OECD average stands at $13,957.
In the end, though, spending on education also turns out to be a good investment for the government: in the United States at least, taxpayers with a university degree contribute up to $200,000 more to the state than was invested in them, compared with their peers without tertiary education.
This year’s ranking, 2014, looks like this:
- Russia: 53.4% of adults aged 25 to 64 hold some kind of university degree.
- Canada: 52.6%.
- Japan: 46.6%.
- Israel: 46.2%.
- United States: 43.1%.
- South Korea: 41.7%.
- Australia: 41.3%.
- United Kingdom: 41.0%.
- New Zealand: 40.6%.
- Ireland: 39.7%.
These countries are followed by Belgium (34%), Switzerland (33%), Luxembourg (33%), Sweden (32.5%), Iceland (32%), Denmark (32%), the Netherlands (31.8%) and Spain (31%).
It is worth pointing out that Spain shows a strange divergence in the data. Although it does not come off badly in this ranking, the OECD draws a parallel between the percentage of university graduates and unemployment, and Spain has an unsustainable unemployment rate, far above the average of the other OECD countries.
In other words, our level of university education is perfectly normal, which shows that someone must not have done things right for so many of our university graduates to be out of work.
At the bottom of the ranking we find Portugal (15%), Italy (15%), Mexico (17%), the Czech Republic (17%), Poland (23%) and Greece (24%).
See also: The 10 developed countries with the worst quality of life
Featured image: Alexxx1979, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
