Everything you heard about college hockey players could be wrong. Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) figures suggest Canada is the most highly educated country in the world.
According to OECD’s “Education at a Glance 2011” report, 50% of Canada’s population has a post-secondary education, easily the highest percentage in the world. Canada spends 2.5% of its GDP each year on education, the fourth-highest rate. Institutions like McGill University can hold their own with the best U.S. schools.
The OECD study also found that over the past 50 years, college graduation rates in developed countries have increased nearly 200%. Education is improving around the world, though it has not done so evenly. South Korea and Israel have vaulted to high rankings, while China and other emerging market nations struggle to catch up.
China has a long tradition of education, and has spent years turning its top universities into world-class institutions. However, it has been hampered by cultural issues, as evidenced by a recent scandal in which teaching assistants gave fraudulent grades to failing students. As former Finance teacher Richard Thwaites explained, ““In Chinese post-secondary education, there’s a culture, there’s a mentality, there’s a belief that every student passes. . . . I have had Chinese faculty members tell me that they have been ordered to pass the students,”
Ironically, the fraud happened on the Chinese campus of a Canadian college.