China is churning out graduates like iPhones
China has been building the equivalent of almost one university per week. It is part of a silent revolution that is causing a huge shift in the composition of the world's population of graduates. For decades, the United States had the highest proportion of people going to university.
China has overtaken the United States and the combined university systems of European Union countries. Even modest predictions see the number of 25 to 34-year-old graduates in China rising by a further 300% by 2030, compared with an increase of around 30% expected in Europe and the United States.
In the United States, students have been struggling to afford university costs. In Europe, most countries have put a brake on expanding their universities by either not making public investments or not allowing universities to raise money themselves.
In 2013, 40% of Chinese graduates completed their studies in a Stem (science, technology, engineering and maths) subject - more than twice the share of US graduates. By 2030, China and India could account for more than 60% of the Stem graduates in major economies, compared with only 8% in Europe and 4% in the United States. With such an increase in people in higher education, conventional wisdom might assume that the value of qualifications would suffer from "inflation".
But this is not happening. In the OECD countries with the biggest increases in graduate numbers, most continue to see rising earnings. This suggests that an increase in "knowledge workers" does not lead to a decline in their pay, unlike the way that technological advancement and globalisation have pushed down the earnings of poorly-educated workers. In the past, OECD countries competed mostly with countries that offered low-skilled work at low wages.
China has shown the world that it is possible to simultaneously raise quantity and quality in schools. In the latest round of the OECD Pisa tests, the 10% most disadvantaged 15-year-olds in Shanghai scored higher in mathematics than the 10% most privileged 15-year-olds in the United States.
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