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It is difficult to argue against the value of education to a society. Many of us have “played the numbers” to draw connections between higher levels of education and higher personal incomes, better health, lower crime rates, greater levels of civic engagement, and more vibrant economies. But despite what we’ve learned about the value of education, if we extend recent enrollment trends into the future, we find that education levels in the U.S. may decline—at the very time that a well-educated populace is needed the most.
The United States led the world in the percentage of its population with college degrees through the middle and end of the 20th century. Our overall success gave us competitive confidence. But in recent years, several other countries have been making remarkable progress in educating their residents, producing young-adult populations that are more educated than any age group in their histories. Further, several of the countries that have surpassed us are improving the educational attainment of their younger residents at rates unmatched in the United States.
When we recently presented this picture to several audiences of higher-education leaders and policymakers, we heard two reactions from those who are skeptical about threats to continued American educational supremacy. First, they argued that degrees are not comparable across countries, their underlying assumption being that ours are of higher quality—a contention that has never been proven. Moreover, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the source of the data on degrees earned, has been diligent in its efforts to address the question of degree comparability and would not produce the comparison of the percentages of populations with college degrees at all without the agreement of participating countries.
Patrick J. Kelly is a senior associate at the National Center for Higher Education Management Systems. Brian T. Prescott is a research associate at the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education.
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