<p>"The United States has fallen from first to 12th in the share of adults ages 25 to 34 with postsecondary degrees, according to a new report from the College Board.</p>
<p>Canada is now the global leader in higher education among young adults, with 55.8 percent of that population holding an associate degree or better as of 2007, the year of the latest international ranking. The United States sits 11 places back, with 40.4 percent of young adults holding postsecondary credentials.</p>
<p>The report, to be presented Thursday to Capitol Hill policymakers, is backed by a commission of highly placed educators who have set a goal for the United States to reclaim world leadership in college completion -- and attain a 55 percent completion rate -- by 2025."</p>
<p>the more educated we are, the better; maybe the job market hasn’t adapted, and tuition is high, but i think in the long run, the more people that go to college, the better</p>
<p>Note that Canada is already at 55.8% and our goal is 55% by 2025. It’s kind of like An Inconvenient Truth where it would take 20 yrs to catch up to where the Japanese are now in car efficiency. Are the people in Washington just so bad at math to not realize that even if the Canadian rate stayed the same (it could increase) we would still be behind.</p>
<p>Plus, people who are criticizing the number as too high, they’re including associates degrees in the mix. A lot of those degress are vocational in nature.</p>
There could be many reasons we did not improve as fast as come other countries, although given the lack of data in this article, and the lack of analysis, there is no way to know.</p>
<p>You also have to consider the source - this report was put out by the College Board, whose reason for existence is to make money charging US students for tests and testing materials. I wouldn’t put it past them to skew the methodology, or outright manipulate the data, to make the US appear worse off than we really are. The more emphasis that gets placed on going to college, the more tests and books they sell.</p>
<p>I don’t blindly believe a study funded by the tobacco companies that cigarettes aren’t deadly, or believe a study funded by breweries that a beer a day is good for you. Why should I blindly believe a study funded by the testing company that shows we need to send more kids to college to “keep up”?</p>
<p>Unfortunately the article says nothing about how this study was performed. So I take it with a huge grain of salt. I don’t care enough to dig it up (if it is even available) to analyze it for bias, though.</p>
<p>This is a good thing. The more people that get degrees the lower its value becomes. And you don’t need a degree for every job. So, that rank in a way is kind of useless.</p>
<p>the value of a degree to a nation is not it’s vocational value, but rather it’s intellectual value… you can’t evaluate education just based on what kind of job it’ll land someone</p>
<p>yes, not everyone should go to college, but those who want to should not be discouraged from doing so as long as they recognize its inherent risks</p>
<p>The demographics and political system is far different in America than in those other countries. I don’t see why we need to compare, what does it matter how many years of education the people in other countries have had.</p>
<p>Further, each of these countries develops their own standards for education. It’s not a reasonable comparison.</p>
<p>This isnt something that obscure, the numbers are in national censuses and the like, if they faked something it will be pretty easy to find out.</p>
<p>re: other countries different political systems, etc. I am not sure how those differences make degrees less useful or less socially beneficial in the US than elsewhere. Ditto, I am not sure how differences in educational systems do. if anything, countries like Canada, where, IIUC, secondary educ typically goes further than in the US, should have FEWER post secondary degrees.</p>
<p>The only caveat on the decline - how does it reflect immigrants. It is possible that the US born population is increasing its education level rapidly, but that this is offset by growing numbers of less educated immigrants. That bears analyzing.</p>
“Faking it” is too strong. But it is rare to have any kind of study where someone doesn’t have an axe to grind (typically belonging to whoever funds the study). And you know what they say about statistics.</p>
<p>This stuff can often be very easy to find, but you have to get the full paper, which may not be easy. And your average reporter writing a short article on a deadline is not going to take the time to thoroughly analyze the data, and probably has neither the interest nor the intelligence anyway. If the reporter read more than a one page summary about the results of the study, I’d be shocked.</p>
<p>The US would be ranked even lower if the study gave adequate consideration to cultural differences in the various educational systems. For example, about 50% of young adults in Germany get a vocational degree through an apprenticeship. This includes professions like accounting, nursing and early childhood education, which in the US require some sort of college education. Yet, those vocational degrees are not considered postsecondary credentials for the purpose of this study.</p>
<p>In my opinion, this drop in rankings is an accurate portrayal of the U.S.A’s educational prowess relative to other nation’s. It is necessary to look at it from this point of view rather than the one that shows the U.S.A is more educated in the past because if the U.S.A plans to maintain or increase it’s education, it cannot just be satisfied by improving, it has to improve more than the other nations improve.</p>