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Education at a Glance 2007 Presentation: Barbara Ischinger Director, OECD Directorate for Education Grover J. (Russ) Whitehurst Director, Institute of Education Sciences

Event Description:

Dr. Barbara Ischinger, OECD Director for Education, will report on the findings of the most comprehensive annual comparison of the education systems of the world’s leading economies. Dr. Grover Whitehurst, Director of the Institute of Education Sciences at the US Department of Education, will provide comments on the report.

Education at a Glance provides a rich, comparable and up-to-date array of indicators on the performance of education systems, the significant economic benefits of education for individuals, and the economy as a whole. It represents the consensus of professional thinking on how to measure the current state of education internationally.

Dr. Ischinger will focus her presentation on the US education system, and the long-term and emerging trends in how it compares with the education systems of our economic competitors.

• University entry rates in the US are at 64%, still 10 percentage points above the OECD average, but only 54% complete with a degree, no other country has a lower “survival rate”.
• Average tuition fees in US public colleges are at levels well beyond that of any other country in the OECD area, but going to college remains a worthwhile investment for individuals: In 2005, earnings for tertiary graduates were 75% higher on average than those for people with only secondary education, a differential that is up from 68% in 1997 and higher only in the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Portugal.
• As many OECD countries have seen a massive expansion of higher education, the US has fallen back in terms of higher education attainment, from first in the OECD among older cohorts to tenth among those aged 25-34 years. Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Ireland, Japan, Korea, Norway and Spain now show higher levels of tertiary attainment in the younger population aged 25 to 34.
• The number of people with a tertiary science degree per 100 000 employed 25-to-34-year-olds in the United States is 1 100 for university-level qualifications and 301 for non-university tertiary qualifications. Both figures are well below the corresponding OECD averages of 1 295 and 384.
• Although international student numbers have increased in the United States between 2000 and 2005, other countries have taken more of the increasing market. Compared to 2000, the United States saw its share on the international education market decline by 4.5 percentage points from 26 to 22%.
• After Mexico, Turkey, Spain, and New Zealand, the United States has, at 76%, the fifth-lowest high school completion rate, and those who have not obtained a high-school degree face much greater penalties on labor-markets than is the case in other countries.
• Emerging trends in job-related training and learning show US participation rates in such activities to be among the highest of OECD countries, but data shows that it is least common among lower-income employees who need it the most.
• While students in the US with an immigrant background fall behind their native peers, their disadvantage is smaller than on average across OECD countries, and is much smaller than in most European countries.

This year’s edition of Education at a Glance will be released on the morning of September 18, 2007.

Biographies:

Barbara Ischinger took the post of Director for Education on January 1, 2006. Dr. Ischinger has held a range of senior international positions over the last 13 years in the fields of international co-operation and education, with a focus on Europe, the United States and Africa. Before joining the OECD, Dr. Ischinger was Executive Vice-President for International Affairs and Public Relations at Berlin Humboldt Universität (2000-2005). Her experience includes the reshaping of academic curricula and professional training to adjust them to the labour market conditions and social development. Between 1992-1994, she was a Director at UNESCO heading the Division of International Cultural Co-operation, Presentation and Enrichment of Cultural Identities. From 1994 to 2000, she was Executive Director of the Fulbright Commission for Educational Exchange between the United States and Germany.

Grover J. (Russ) Whitehurst was appointed in 2002 to a six-year term as the first director of the Institute of Education Sciences, the research arm of the U.S. Department of Education. The Institute includes the National Center for Education Statistics, the National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance, the National Center for Education Research, and the National Center for Special Education Research. Whitehurst previously served as U.S. assistant secretary for educational research and improvement. Prior to beginning federal service, he was Leading Professor of Psychology and Pediatrics and Chairman of the Department of Psychology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. During his academic career, Whitehurst published five books, and more than 100 research papers on language and reading readiness in children. He developed programs for enhancing children’s language development that are widely used in preschool programs in the U.S. and other countries. Whitehurst received a Ph.D. in experimental child psychology from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, in 1970.