End of empire for Western universities??

[ChennaiSKing]

By the end of this decade, four out of every 10 of the world's young graduates are going to come from just two countries - China and India.

The projection from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) shows a far-reaching shift in the balance of graduate numbers, with the rising Asian economies accelerating ahead of the United States and western Europe.

The forecasts for the shape of the "global talent pool" in 2020 show China as rapidly expanding its graduate numbers - set to account for 29% of the world's graduates aged between 25 and 34.

The biggest faller is going to be the United States - down to 11% - and for the first time pushed into third place, behind India.

The US and the countries of the European Union combined are expected to account for little more than a quarter of young graduates.

Russia is also set to decline - its share of the world's graduates almost falling by half since the beginning of the century.

Indonesia, according to the OECD's projections, will rise into fifth place.

Degrees of change
Is this an end-of-empire moment?

Higher education has become the mirror and magnifier of economic performance - and in the post-World-War-II era, universities in the US, western Europe, Japan and Russia have dominated.

The US in particular has been the university superpower - in wealth, influence and until recently in raw numbers.


Up until 2000, the US still had a share of young graduates similar to China. And Japan had as big a proportion of young graduates as India.

Now China and India are the biggest players.

Their rise in graduate numbers reflects their changing ambitions - wanting to compete against advanced economies for high-skill, high-income employment.

Instead of offering low-cost manufacture, they are targeting the hi-tech professional jobs that have become the preserve of the Westernised middle classes.

Chinese parents rent apartments near schools to cut travelling time during university entrance exams

Fivefold growth
As the OECD figures show, this is not simply a case of countries such as China expanding while others stand still.

Across the industrialised world, graduate numbers are increasing - just not as quickly as China, where they have risen fivefold in a decade.

The OECD notes that by 2020, China's young graduate population will be about the same as the total US population between the ages of 25 and 64.



This changing world map will see Brazil having a bigger share of graduates than Germany, Turkey more than Spain, Indonesia three times more than France.

The UK is bucking the trend, projected to increase its share from 3% in 2010 to 4% in 2020.

This push for more graduates has a clear economic purpose, says the OECD's analysis.

Enough jobs?
Shifting from "mass production to knowledge economy occupations" means improved employment rates and earnings - so there are "strong incentives" for countries to expand higher education.

But will there be enough graduate jobs to go round?

The OECD has tried to analyse this by looking at one aspect of the jobs market - science and technology-related occupations.

These jobs have grown rapidly - and the report suggests it is an example of how expanding higher education can generate new types of employment.

These science and technology jobs - for professionals and technicians - account for about four in every 10 jobs in some Scandinavian and northern European countries, the OECD suggests.

In contrast - and showing more of the old order - these technology jobs are only a small fraction of the workforce in China and India.

The OECD concludes that there are substantial economic benefits from investing in higher education - creating new jobs for the better-educated as unskilled manufacturing jobs disappear.

India will have the second largest share of the world's graduates by 2020, says the OECD

For further news :BBC News - End of empire for Western universities?

 

[parkland]

what matters now is quality of education. in terms is buisness school i think today india is ahead of every asian nation.

in terms if engineering we need to get more reputed unis and also invest in rresearch, so the new grads also help in producing something innovative.

 

[SLIM]

u mentioned 3 of the 4 nations that form the BRIC. i add brasil to the trio of china india and russia. turkey and indonesia are not far behing too.
now to come to prediction, china seems a giant on the outside. but not from the inside. it's not.
- one child policy will in 50 year (when the bulk of the working force today retire) will bring china to its knees, just like japan's 1990s.
- no freedom, no reliable justice, and the one party policy is a huge geopardy to investements.
china is no competitor in the long run, unless it chages dramatically.

 

[parkland]

this is not the end of the empire, west will still be the most innovative in the world for quite sometime, but yes at some point in the future asian unis will be better than the western.