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Return to Archives Return to Article Summaries Fall-Winter 2008, Vol. 7, Issue 5 UNDERSTANDING EDUCATION SYSTEMS GLOBALLY: Perspectives From and On the Directorate for Education at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) By George Lorenzo Preface Some Interesting Data
About the U.S.
Respected but Perhaps
Losing Some Ground "Many countries look to the United States, not necessarily as a model, but as an example of a system which is highly diversified, well-funded and pretty successful," notes Richard Yelland, head of the Education Management and Infrastructure Division in OECD’s Directorate for Education. "The U.S. institutions have a good reputation on the whole, and the states have always attracted their fair share of the global market." Still, one cannot help but feel a sense of impending U.S. higher education erosion when reading such data results. For example, in April 2008, the officers and members (past and present) of the State Higher Education Executive Officers (SHEEO) came out with a white paper with the following statement that highlighted OECD data: Today universities in the European Union and Asia are improving rapidly. They now provide competitive educational and research opportunities for brilliant scholars, without requiring them to travel to the U.S. Today 55 percent of young adults in leading countries have an associate degree or higher. In almost all countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, young adults are better educated than older adults. But in the United States only 40 percent of adults aged 25 to 34 have an associate degree or higher; no improvement over the soon-to-retire baby boom generation. Other countries will almost surely continue to improve. A decade from now, unless we accelerate educational progress, the United Stated will be far down the list in educational attainment. 7 Message Not Heard Francisco Marmolejo, executive director of the Consortium for North American Higher Education Collaboration (CONAHEC) and vice president for Western Hemispheric Programs at the University of Arizona, says that he has attended numerous education conferences in the U.S. and abroad where he has heard attendees ask questions about OECD after they have seen a presentation where some kind of OECD data had been provided. "Not only are people who are informed about issues in the world not aware of what OECD does, but they are not aware of what OECD is," Marmolejo says. David Longanecker, president of the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education (WICHE) and previous assistant secretary for postsecondary education at the U.S. Department of Education, says he has always relied on OECD data and information in the many presentations he has given to education professionals and business people throughout the country.8 Longanecker adds that he often gets incredulous reactions to the OECD data and information he presents, and, similar to Marmolejo’s remarks, people in the audience are frequently unaware of OECD’s work overall. At a recent meeting with a group of deans of arts and sciences and education from across the state of New Mexico, Longanecker says "most of them had never seen the OECD comparative data. It was a new arena of data for them." At another meeting with the California Postsecondary Education Commission, as well as at a State Scholars Initiative National Summit, the reaction to OECD data was similar. "You would think that they have seen this stuff, but they really have not," Longanecker says. Gordon Freedman, vice president of education strategy for Blackboard, has attended and presented at several OECD conferences. He also uses OECD data in his presentations to education professionals and shares it with Blackboard clients. He says that the vast majority of attendees at the OECD conferences he has participated in were not from the U.S. "I think more cooperation and involvement by U.S. institutions would be helpful for everybody who attends these conferences," Freedman explains. "I would hope that, in the future, U.S. institutions will take advantage of the U.S. government’s investment in OECD. Many of the perspectives that OECD gathers from around the world could be helpful to U.S. institutions and policymakers." Change on the
Horizon, Particularly at the State Level "We are trying to inform states in the U.S. by saying that they are really competing almost with other nations rather than just with other states in the U.S.," McGuinness says. "I think there is a growing interest in OECD, and it has a lot to do with the attitude and perspectives about what is happening in other countries. Most of the students within the U.S. are at public institutions that function within a state policy context that has great similarities, in some respects, to the kind of issues that other countries are dealing with." McGuniness points to three states where OECD reporting has contributed to the sharing of observations and the facilitation of policy-making advice: Illinois, Kentucky and Texas. In a recent report addressed to the Illinois Board of Higher Education, for instance, OECD-member country higher education attainment data was used to support the notion that Illinois does not compare favorably to international competitors and therefore needs to improve its position if it is to remain globally competitive.9 In another report addressed to the Governor’s Council in Texas, the same OECD reporting was utilized to support the following change-agent kind of statement: The portion of young adults attaining a college degree is well below the national average and even further below many competitor countries. In fact, our State’s 25 to 34 year olds are the least educated group of Texans in two decades, less educated than 35 to 44 year olds who are, in turn, less educated than 45 to 54 year olds. In most other competitor countries, it’s just the opposite with the younger population outperforming the older population in educational attainment. 10 In Kentucky, OECD member data was put alongside similar data from each of Kentucky’s counties, and combined with data from the U.S. Census, to highlight comparative levels of higher education attainment that Kentucky residents have reached. For example, out of 121 Kentucky counties, only 21 countries had a higher percentage of adults with a bachelor’s degree or higher than Mexico, which had a 14% rate.11 Longanecker adds that many states could find value in benchmarking data and information related to education attainment and policy development, learning assessment outcomes and human capital development, etc. against OECD countries. "Many of our states are the same size as nations," he says. "Ireland, which has made tremendous progress in one generation by OECD standards, is the same size as Oregon, Washington, Utah, Colorado and Arizona. They can all learn something from Ireland, and Ireland can learn something from them." Historically, however, data related to U.S. education comes to OECD mostly as an entire nation, flowed in from the National Center for Education Statistics. Longanecker, and other professionals interviewed for this report, believe that comparable data and information sharing can, and should be, expanded and further developed between individual states and OECD member nations. "I am very keen on OECD," Longanecker continues. "Their data has been really important in helping us understand, and getting other people to understand, that the United States is at risk here. We are falling down." Basically, as already noted, the U.S. has not made progress from the older adult population to the younger adult population, while other countries have significantly moved ahead from one generation to the next. "If you look at those countries that have accomplished this growth through intentional public policy, it is really remarkable," he says. "In Korea and Ireland, for example, there is strong evidence that you can really move this needle." Education at a Glance Education at a Glance is an annual document created by the Indicators and Analysis Division, under the leadership of Andreas Schleicher. As noted on its website, the Education at a Glance 2007 edition provides a rich, comparable and up-to-date array of indicators on the performance of education systems. The indicators look at who participates in education, what is spent on it and how education systems operate and at the results achieved. McGuniness says the work that comes out of the Indicators and Analysis Division has a "high degree of credibility and objectivity. It sets the standard and is really well respected. People are increasingly interested in learning about Education at a Glance." "In the statistics-indicator area, OECD is a world standard, and nobody can reach the quality that OECD has in that particular field," adds Kurt Larsen, senior education specialist for the World Bank Institute. "We (the World Bank) use OECD to find benchmarks and where education systems are going in the developed countries. There is quite a lot of collaboration with OECD on a number of issues. We use OECD information to get into a dialogue with countries about education reform. A lot of developing countries look to OECD to find out what the trends are and what practices work." Jorgelina Abbate-Vaughn, assistant professor, curriculum and instruction, University of Massachusetts, Boston, says she happened upon a recent OECD conference held in the Dominican Republic during her stay there as a Fullbright Scholar conducting comparative research about policies in teacher education. She explains that while U.S. teacher education research, in general, carries a strong leadership role worldwide, "at the same time, we never really use that lead to understand how our context is impacted by what happens internationally. With respect to educational research, we do a lot of it completely disconnected from what happens elsewhere in the world." She adds that her new-found relationship with OECD led her to data and reports that have helped inform her research and connect her with others around the world. "The OECD reports give us a taste of what the problems are, what we need to look for, where the data is or what we should be looking for to begin with. It also helps U.S.-based researchers link to practitioners and researchers elsewhere in the world. . . Once we are able to relate trends (occurring elsewhere) to what we see in our own investigation in the U.S., we can more credibly engage scholars from other areas of the world in research that helps both populations." A Changing Global
Landscape Schleicher adds that this does not mean that things have gotten worse. "In fact things have improved and moved significantly faster in a number of other countries in terms of putting out more people with college degrees. So, it is very relevant for institutions — not just to see where they stand in relation to where they stood one year ago or ten years ago — but to look outwardly at how the market is changing and how the international landscape is changing." Schleicher further elaborates on how higher education in OECD countries is experiencing rapid change, pointing to the increasing amount of diversity in higher education worldwide on different levels. "Higher education was a pretty uniform thing 10 or 15 years ago, but it has become a very diverse set of institutions that care for a very diverse set of student interests and capacities in a social-economic context. In the past we have seen very traditional universities that catered to very specific demands. Today it is a broad range of institutions and a much more demand-led environment that is more diverse. We have changed from a supply-driven environment to one that is much more interesting and flexible." Globally Competitive,
Locally Engaged Inside the Executive Summary of Globally Competitive, Locally Engaged, it is noted that higher education institutions (HEIs) must help in the development of knowledge-based industries within the regions where they are located by providing more opportunities for lifelong learning. Particularly for older, traditional HEIs, the emphasis has often been on serving national goals or on the pursuit of knowledge with little regard for the surrounding environment. This is now changing. To be able to play their regional role, HEIs must do more than simply educate and research — they must engage with others in their regions, provide opportunities for lifelong learning and contribute to the development of knowledge-intensive jobs which will enable graduates to find local employment and remain in their communities. This has implications for all aspects of these institutions’ activities — teaching, research and service to the community and for the policy and regulatory framework in which they operate. 14 Yelland explains that the importance of international and globalization trends can often be exaggerated. "Most countries say they are very keen toward attracting international students, but they are primarily funded and managed to meet the needs of their country or a smaller unit than that . . . We do live in a globalized world, but there’s a lot of research on the importance of proximity and trying to understand and deal with that. The report offers some suggestions, and it is one we are going to continue to work on." A related problem, Yelland continues, is that university presidents, governing boards and politicians can be overly concerned with international higher education rankings instead of focusing on the contributions higher education can make toward their local knowledge economies, particularly as such contributions can be applied to the development of small and medium-sized businesses. More About Regional
Development The University of Arizona’s Marmolejo is an active participant in the IMHE projects, having served in a number of important capacities, including managing and participating on peer-review teams for the production of these IMHE regional reports. Marmolejo says that he has seen how useful it is for institutions in a given geographical area to think about their roles in regional development. He explains how the process of peer review includes interviewing people managing higher education governance, representatives of regional governments, employers, alumni, students and faculty members, and then producing a document with a series of very specific recommendations for higher education institutions, government officials, businesses and the community at large. "If a region is smart, it will utilize that document to foster changes in policy," he says. "It helps to confirm that OECD is saying that it should do something. It is a way to have that kind of external pressure that is extremely useful. I have seen this happen in Spain, in Mexico, in Brazil. In all those places I saw that when OECD produced something, people listened." Activities at the
Centre for Educational Research and Innovation CERI has established an international reputation for pioneering educational research that covers learning at every age, from birth to old age and going beyond the formal education system. CERI has a particular concern with emerging trends and issues, and futures thinking in schools and universities.16 The New Mellennium Learners (NML) Project is following the emergence of digital native learners in OECD countries and what educational institutions have done to accommodate, or to struggle with, NML characteristics, expectations and needs.17 Pedrü explains that in most OECD countries approximately 95 percent of 15-years olds have access to the Internet from their homes, and, in theory, they have the same kind of facilities and access from their schools. Teenager at home typically spend about two to three hours a day connected to the Internet, while at school they go online on average of only 1.5 hours per week. "We are trying to provide evidence in an attempt to convince policy makers in OECD countries that they should pay attention to this divorce between school and outside-of-school uses of technology," Pedrü says. “If we are aiming towards a knowledge society, our children are already there. But when they are in school, they are still in the 19th century." For the past five to six years, Country Reviews on Educational Research and Development has been covering the extent to which the educational R&D systems within New Zealand, England, Mexico, Denmark and Switzerland are functioning as repositories of knowledge on which practitioners and policy-makers can draw.18 "We are now planning for the future and are thinking seriously about creating a system of indicators intended to benchmark educational research inputs, processes and outputs in all OECD countries," Pedrü says. “We are also planning to do some activities related to the role played by educational research in teacher training. The main problem we have raised during these reviews is that there is a complete disconnection between what educational researchers are doing and the improvement of teaching practices. There is also a clear disconnection between what the research results say and what policy makers really claim." Systemic Innovation in Education is looking into innovative policies in the education sector in two areas: vocational education and training in Denmark, Hungry, Germany, Mexico, Australia and Switzerland, and, on a completely different theme, the use of digital learning resources in the schools sector within these countries. "The systemic analysis of innovation involves the comparative investigation of how education systems or sectors go about initiating innovation, the processes involved, the knowledge base which is drawn on, and the procedures and criteria for assessing progress and outcomes."19 According to Pedrü, this particular activity is looking into “how countries go about education innovation; how, for example, they finance and promote innovation and also what the connections are between educational research and educational innovations.” On the digital resources side of this activity, Pedrü explains that OECD is looking closely at “national portals that are intended to offer teachers, parents and pupils with digital learning resources — the kind of things that you can freely download from the Internet and are sponsored by governments. What we are seeing is that governments are investing a lot, but the level of usage by teachers tends to be low. In some of the countries we are exploring it seems that user-created portals do better than the government-sponsored portals." A good number of additional CERI activities fall under the following categories: Education in the Future, Education and Globalisation, Innovative Practices for Education, and Education and Research.20 Some of
OECD’s Other Work In Progress Basically, PISA is an assessment process that countries agree on. Sixty-two countries have signed up to participate in the 4th assessment in 2009, with tests typically administered to between 4,500 and 10,000 students in each country. "The OECD collects the data; we basically run the surveys in collaboration with national agencies, and, more or less, you have one instrument that is implemented in the same way across all the countries," Schleicher says. Following on the heels of PISA is the relatively new Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC), also under Schleicher. PIAAC will assess adult skills across countries, focusing on "the key cognitive and workplace skills that are required for successful participation in the economy and society of the 21st century." Plans are to administer this assessment for the first time in 2011. "PIAAC will also gather a range of other information including the antecedents and outcomes of skills, as well as information on usage of information technology and literacy and numeracy practices generally."22 "We are not looking at education from the angle of a specific institution," Schleicher explains. "We are trying to look at education as something that is a social phenomenon, and we are trying to see where and what type of learning occurs - from early childhood education, to the university, to learning at the workplace - and what are the social and economic outcomes of that learning for countries and for individuals. That is the idea that is driving our work." Editor’s Note: Many other OECD Education Directorate activities have not been covered in this report, including initiatives coming out of its Education and Training Policy Division, the Programme for Co-operation with Non Member Economies, and much more. OECD also holds numerous conferences, seminars and meetings throughout the year. For more information about the Education Directorate, visit www.oecd.org/department/0,3355,en_2649_33723_1_1_1_1_1,00.html. For more information about the OECD organization as a whole, start at www.oecd.org. End Notes: 1. OECD, "Education at a Glance 2007: OECD Indicators," Table A1.3a, "Population that has attained tertiary education (2005): Percentage of the population that has attained tertiary-type B education or tertiary-type A and advanced research programmes, by age group," www.oecd.org/document/30/0,3343,en_2649_39263294_39251550_1_1_1_1,00.html.Note: Tertiary-type A programmes, as defined by the International Standard Classification of Education, "are largely theory-based and are designed to provide sufficient qualifications for entry into advanced research programmes and professions with high skill requirements. . . Tertiary-type A programmes have a minimum cumulative theoretical duration (at the tertiary level) of three years full-time equivalent, although they typically last four or more years." Tertiary-type B progammes, as defined by the International Standard Classification of Education, "are typically shorter than those of tertiary-type A and focus on practical, technical or occupational skills for direct entry into the labour market, although some theoretical foundations may be covered in the respective programmes. They have a minimum duration of two years full-time equivalent at the tertiary level." For more information, see www.unesco.org/education/information/nfsunesco/doc/isced_1997.htm.2. Ibid. 3. OECD, "Education at a Glance 2001: OECD Indicators," Table A2.1a, "Educational attainment of the population (1999): Distribution of the population 25 to 64 years of age by highest level of education attained," www.oecd.org/document/52/0,3343,en_2649_39263294_37539316_1_1_1_1,00.html.4. OECD, "PISA 2006 Science Competencies for Tomorrow's World: Volume 1 - Analysis," Figure 2.11c, Range of rank of countries/economies on the science scale, www.pisa.oecd.org/document/2/0,3343,en_32252351_32236191_39718850_1_1_1_1,00.html.5. OECD, "PISA 2006 Science Competencies for Tomorrow’s World: Volume 1 - Analysis," Figure 6.20b, Range of rank of countries/economies on the mathematics scale, www.pisa.oecd.org/document/2/0,3343,en_32252351_32236191_39718850_1_1_1_1,00.html.6. OECD, "OECD Factbook 2008: Economic, Environmental and Social Statistics," Total expenditure on educational institutions for all levels of education, http://ocde.p4.siteinternet.com/publications/doifiles/09-02-03-g1.xls.7. State Higher Education Executive Officers, "Second to None in Attainment, Discovery and Innovation: The National Agenda for Higher Education," April 30, 2008, www.sheeo.org/federal/SHEEO%20Presidential%20White%20Paper%2008%20v%202.pdf.8. Many of Longanecker’s presentations are available online at www.wiche.edu/director/.9. NCHEMS, "A Public Agenda for Agenda for Illinois Higher Education: Planning for Career and College Success," draft, March 17, 2008, www.ibhe.org/masterPlanning/materials/APublicAgendaforIllinois.pdf.10. Governor’s Business Council (Texas), "Leading the Way: An Action Plan for Making Texas Higher Education Globally Competitive," February 2007, http://texashighereducation.org/thereport. 11. Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education, "2008-10 County Profiles: Losing Ground in the Global Economy," January 2008, www.cpe.ky.gov/info/county/. 12. Schleicher was referring to the percentage of tertiary-type A graduates to the population at the typical age of graduation as noted in the OECD Factbook 2008, where it shows that in 1995 the U.S. was tied with New Zealand at the top of the list at 32.7%. In 2000, the U.S. was ranked 8th on the list, at 34.4%. In 2005, its rank had dropped to 15th on the list, at 34.2%. See http://ocde.p4.siteinternet.com/publications/doifiles/09-01-02-g1.xls. 13. OECD, "Higher Education and Regions: Globally Competitive, Locally Engaged," September 20, 2007, www.oecd.org/document/13/0,3343,en_21571361_38973579_39378401_1_1_1_1,00.html. 14. OECD, "Higher Education and Regions: Globally Competitive, Locally Engaged," Executive Summary, September 20, 2007, www.oecd.org/dataoecd/51/27/39378517.pdf.15.OECD, "Project on Supporting the
Contribution of Higher Education Institutions to Regional Development,"
www.oecd.org/document/48/0,3343,en_2649_35961291_39872432_1_1_1_1,00.html. 16. OECD Center for Educational Research and Innovation (CERI www.oecd.org/department/0,2688,en_2649_35845581_1_1_1_1_1,00.html.17. OECD New Mellennium Learners Project, www.oecd.org/document/10/0,3343,en_2649_35845581_38358154_1_1_1_1,00.html.18. OECD Country Reviews on Educational Research and Development, www.oecd.org/document/39/0,3343,en_2649_35845581_31236711_1_1_1_1,00.html.19. OECD Systemic Innovation in Education, www.oecd.org/document/1/0,3343,en_2649_35845581_38777345_1_1_1_1,00.html.20. Access links to all of CERI’s activities at www.oecd.org/document/32/0,3343,en_2649_35845581_35524256_1_1_1_1,00.html. 21. OECD, Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), www.pisa.oecd.org/pages/0,2987,en_32252351_32235731_1_1_1_1_1,00.html.22. OECD, Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC), www.oecd.org/document/10/0,3343,en_2649_33723_40290890_1_1_1_1,00.html.
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