Which Country’s Higher Education System Is Best?

Many Americans crow that our higher education system is “the envy of the world,” even though it’s nearly impossible to point to any proof of that. In truth, however, some Americans look down on our system, saying that it is clearly inferior to that of other nations, such as Japan and Finland.

A recent study published by the American Enterprise Institute, “International Higher Education Rankings” by Jason Delisle and Preston Cooper prompts my title. The authors have undertaken a comprehensive analysis of 35 advanced nations, examining their higher education systems along three metrics: attainment, resources, and subsidies.

In the study, a nation’s attainment score depends on the percentage of its population that has earned some kind of postsecondary education credential. Its resources score is a measurement of its per capital spending on higher education relative to its economic capacity (GDP). Finally, its subsidy score is based on government higher education spending relative to the nation’s entire higher education spending—i.e., how much of the cost is borne by government compared with costs borne by students, families, and other parties.

So, which countries score highest on those metrics?

Delisle and Cooper find that the top five on attainment are, in order, South Korea, Canada, Japan, Ireland, and Australia. They are most successful in getting people through some tertiary education program. (The United States ranks 11th.)

The top five on subsidies are Finland, Norway, Luxembourg, Denmark, and Austria. Those countries do the most to keep the cost of higher education low for students. (The United States ranks 31st.)

And on resources, the top five are the United Kingdom, Slovakia, the U.S., Sweden, and Japan. They’re spending the most on higher education relative to their economic capability.

Sensibly, the authors conclude that from their analysis, it isn’t possible to state that any country’s system is best because they all must make trade-offs.

Finland, for example, is often lauded by American “progressives” because it makes higher education nearly free to students (the government covers 96 percent of the cost for students). So isn’t it the best? Delisle and Cooper say that it’s a mistake to leap to that conclusion. As they note in this piece, “Finland offers a nice deal for students only if they are lucky and talented enough to get in. In 2016, Finnish institutions of higher education accepted just 33 percent of applicants.”

By making higher education virtually free for students, Finland must accept a low attainment rate. (Is that harmful? Finland’s per-capita GDP is higher than Japan, South Korea, France, Italy, and many other nations, and just slightly below Canada, Australia, and Austria. The study doesn’t try to answer such questions.)

South Korea, on the other hand, has the highest attainment rate. The trade-off for that, the authors note, is that South Korea has such a high number of college graduates that average earnings for them aren’t much higher than for many South Koreans who don’t have college degrees.

Have the South Korean officials who created their country’s policy made a mistake? Should they alter their approach to be more like Finland? Or have Finnish officials made a mistake? Should they alter their approach to be more like South Korea? And what about the U.S.? Is our higher education system, heavily resourced though it is, deficient in not giving us a better attainment rate?

Given the fact that resources are limited, there will always be trade-offs between seemingly positive outcomes. That’s the big point that the authors hope political leaders and government regulators will take from their study: “Recognizing that trade-offs between desirable goals exist will force policy-makers to think critically about whether pursuing a certain goal is worth it.”

That is what policymakers ought to do.

The trouble is that government officials, elected and appointed, are very unlikely to do any such thinking, and even if they did, it is unlikely that they would make systemic adjustments to allow the nation to get the most educational value for the resources used.

I say that because governmental decision-making on education is inherently flawed. We cannot get the optimal trade-offs between different approaches to education (and between education and other goods) through government.

The best policy, in other words, is to have no policy. Leave higher education entirely up to the voluntary choices of individuals who spend their own money for the kind of education they find beneficial. That’s the way for any nation to develop its ideal education system—through the spontaneous order of a free society.

In the United States, we followed that approach for more than a century after the nation’s founding. Professor Richard Vedder, in his illuminating chapter on the early history of American higher education in the recent book Unprofitable Schooling, edited by Todd Zywicki and Neal McCluskey, points out that we enjoyed a highly dynamic, growing economy in the years when state involvement with higher education was minimal and federal involvement non-existent.

Vedder takes pains to refute the notion that the federal Morrill Act of 1862, which encouraged states to establish land grant universities, was the catalyst for our economic expansion following the Civil War. He writes that America “had the largest output of goods and services of any Western country before any significant number of students had even graduated from the new land-grant universities and colleges.”

Our growth rate surpassed the rest of the world despite the fact that we had no higher education policy and very few of our inventors, scientists, architects, and other professionals had been to college. Laissez faire worked just fine.

The problems with government action to supposedly improve higher education are the same problems that beset governmental intervention in all other markets.

First, government officials don’t bear the cost of their mistakes. If they spend too much on higher education or the wrong kinds of education, the waste doesn’t hit them personally, but is buried in the total burden imposed on the taxpayers. Individuals, in contrast, do bear the cost of their mistakes, so they think hard about the relative costs and benefits of education, and quickly make changes if they find that they haven’t chosen the best.

Second, government officials are prone to making decisions based on short-run, political considerations. Therefore, they are drawn to support measures (especially subsidies) that create immediate and obvious benefits they can boast about at the next election. Equally, they’re prone to ignore any long-run bad consequences that laws and regulations will have since they probably won’t be blamed for those consequences. Individuals, on the other hand, have to live with the long-run effects of their decisions and thus are more inclined to consider the future rather than just the short-run.

Third, government officials are often swayed by special interest groups that see opportunities to cash in on spending programs. Swarms of lobbyists roam the federal buildings where educational decisions are made, promising support for politicians who vote the right way on bills. The system inevitably becomes biased in favor of potent interest groups looking for more money and protection against change. Education consumers have little or no voice in governmental decisions, which often increase their costs and limit their options.

There are many other deficiencies in government policy-making, but those three suffice to make the point. Compared with free markets, governmental systems are certain to be costly, inefficient, and corrupt.

Let’s compare the higher education market with its massive government intervention with another important market where there is none: fitness. Being physically fit is a big part of many Americans’ lives, but the government leaves such decisions entirely up to individuals. (The President’s Council on Fitness, Sports, and Nutrition has existed since the 1950s, but thankfully can only encourage people to do some things and not do others. If it disappeared, only a few bureaucrats would notice.)

We do not have subsidies for gyms or health club memberships. We do not have federally accredited fitness institutions. We don’t have national fitness goals. We don’t have a fitness system at all, but instead millions of individual choices regarding the best degree of fitness and the best ways of achieving it. Those choices involve personal knowledge and expense. That’s what makes our lack of fitness policy the ideal policy.

Americans like laissez faire when it comes to physical fitness, but it doesn’t give politicians reason to brag about their “accomplishments” for us.

To conclude, I have to take issue with Delisle and Cooper when they say in their subtitle, “no country’s higher education system can be the best.” Every country can have the best system, which is to say, getting the most educational value for the least expenditure of resources. They can do that by relying on the spontaneous order of the free market and ditching all governmental programs that interfere with it.

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Prospects for Federal Higher Education Reform? Little in Short Run

I spent some time recently chatting with some major players in federal higher education policy, including three members of the U.S. Senate, concluding that almost no important changes will happen before the 2020 elections. The Democrats are not eager to act, thinking they can gain complete control of government in the next elections and enact radical progressive reforms in 2021. The Republicans feel stymied by a Democratic House, a President preoccupied by other issues (mainly his own reelection), and some division within their own ranks. The Higher Education Act renewal is overdue, not surprising as Congress rarely finishes appropriating funds before a fiscal year starts, much less update the Higher Education Act.

Big changes will not happen in the short term. For the Democrats, that means things like free college or, minimally, vastly expanded Pell Grants, killing off for-profit colleges, and restoring Obama era centralized controls over colleges and universities, including highly controversial “guidance” on the handling of sexual harassment cases. For the Republicans, it includes fundamental reform of federal student financial aid, including starting to privatize some or all of it. It might also include legislation promoting intellectual and viewpoint diversity on campus.

There are three useful smaller reforms, however, that have at least some chance of adoption. First, dramatically simplifying the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) form is a no-brainer, one about which almost everyone except some government bureaucrats can unite. The over 100 question form has discouraged students to apply for aid and is frustratingly complicated. I sat in a meeting with the Secretary of Education more than a decade ago where dramatic FAFSA form simplification was the goal and yet, many years later, nothing has happened. The form should either disappear or be simplified to under 10 questions, with the IRS directed (with student authorization) to provide critical financial data needed by schools in determining need-based grants. The failure to even agree on this common sense, non-ideologically based matter is a good example of why Americans are increasingly dissatisfied with their central governing institutions.

A second reform that possibly could win majority support in Congress is “skin in the game” legislation that would make colleges liable for at least a small share of the liabilities they foist on the nation’s taxpayers when students default on student loans. Make the colleges into co-signers on loans as a condition for granting them. Some Democrats and many Republicans have agreed this should happen, and a bill, perhaps one offering added enticements for more liberal legislators (modest Pell Grant expansion perhaps partially financed from college “skin in the game” payments), would have a fair chance of passage. Honest accounting shows the student loan program is operating at a meaningful financial loss, one we can ill afford in an era of totally irresponsible trillion-dollar deficit spending endorsed by both parties. Appropriately packaged, college reform including simplifying the FAFSA and including “skin in the game” would have, I would think, a decent chance for passage and an opportunity for incumbents to vote for something moderately useful.

A third idea, one already being used at a few universities (Purdue, Clarkson, University of Utah) despite some possible legal ambiguities, is Income Share Agreements (ISAs), also used at many coding academies and other non-traditional post-secondary educational institutions. With an ISA, a prospective student signs a contract with an investor who provides financial support for a college education in return for some share of the student’s earnings after graduation for a specific length of time. Some legal experts believe some clarification in federal law is necessary before private investors will start offering this alternative form of financing college to students in large amounts. Democrats might like ISAs since they shift the risks associated with college financing from the student (who is liable for loan payments) to the investor (perhaps a large financial service company). Republicans should love ISAs because they provide a vehicle to partially privatize the dysfunctional federal student financial assistance programs. Merely clarifying that ISAs are enforceable contracts under federal law might lead to increased experimentation with them. Passing these three reforms would allow incumbent members of Congress to say “we did something about our poorly functioning system of financial assistance.”

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Diversity the key to improved performance in schools

Is it now? Below is a press release from the Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership which says it is.  They have just done a glossy "Report" on the matter that they want you to know about.  In my experience, a "report" is what you put out when you can't get your claims into an academic journal.  Nonetheless I had a good look through the report and its associated documents in the hope of finding some claim backed up by a controlled study, hopefully one that was not so brain-dead as to treat many different sorts of people as all simply "diverse".

A serious approach to the question would have looked at different types of diversity.  Did Chinese teachers, for instance, get better results than Aboriginal teachers? I found no evidence of that kind. I found no evidence of any research at all that could be classed as scientific -- no controlled experiments at all.  It was all just pious hopes and vague generalizations.  The "report" is in short totally worthless.  It is a piece of boring old Leftist propaganda only

If I had to make generalizations of their sort I  would have said that teachers get best results when their background is similar to that of their students.  Chinese teachers are best for Chinese students, Aboriginal  teachers are best for aboriginal students etc.  that might not be so but it is at least scientifically examinable


A new evidence summary released today by the Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership (AITSL) highlights the benefits of championing a diverse school leadership workforce in Australia.

The report Spotlight: Diversity in School Leadership, points out that improved diversity in schools leads to a range of benefits, including helping teams work smarter, increasing innovation, and improving performance.

The report supports calls for school systems and sectors to take active steps towards increased quality and diversity within their leadership pools.

AITSL CEO Mark Grant said: “We know that an effective school leadership strategy that is focused on increasing the diversity of future leaders has considerable benefits. This is true for all leadership roles, in all geographical locations from rural and remote to metro areas.”

Workplace research shows that diversity in the teaching workforce can lead to improved outcomes for students academically and in their personal well-being.

The report shows that while diversity among school students is broadly representative of the Australian population, the profile of teachers and school leaders does not currently match Australia’s gender and cultural diversity.

The report found that more than 70 per cent of school teachers in primary and secondary schools are female, with male teachers making up just 18 per cent of primary school teachers, and 40 per cent of secondary teachers.

In terms of cultural diversity, while almost 25 per cent of Australian students come from homes where a language other than English is spoken, only 9 per cent of primary and 11 per cent of secondary teachers speak a language other than English at home.

Also, while almost 6 per cent of Australia’s students identify as Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander, only 2 per cent of Australian teachers identify as Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander, and an even smaller proportion of those are in leadership positions.

“We know that diverse leadership teams improve performance, increase innovation, and generate creative approaches to problem solving,” Mr Grant said.

“It would be a tremendous boon for the education sector if teachers and leaders truly represented all of our community demographics, like different cultural and societal backgrounds, or individuals who identify as having a disability.

Improving diversity in schools begins with increasing diversity in Initial Teacher Education (ITE). As ITE students are the teachers and school leaders of the future, there needs to be just as much focus on diversity in this group as on the current teaching and school leadership workforce.”

“Today’s report highlights the importance of increasing the diversity in our schools. Leadership teams need to put a stronger focus on ensuring they reflect the broader community in their schools. One way this can be done is with recruitment processes that are better targeted to under-represented groups to achieve the broadest possible pool of high quality suitable candidates.”