Jeff Nolan posts on comparative education and statistics and damns socialism. The linkage is interesting; in Britain, at least, the government spending more on education would be viewed as a Labour (slightly to the left) policy. The UK election battle over education is about how to spend less, or at least the same, better. He acknowledges, obliquely, that there is no obvious linkage between cash invested and the quality of the output. Which is the first reason that I felt compelled to post - statistics do lie.
The second reason is that as Russia and Ukraine tend not to be overly covered in comparative studies I was previously forced to go the OECD to get comparative tertiary education data, and thus spent an inordinate amount of time reviewing the data so that it fitted the stroy I was trying to tell. The statistics don't lie they have just been presented to tell my story. So the long and short if you have been unfortunate enough to get a presentation from me on why Ukraine's and Russia's educational system make it a good place to build world-class technology companies you would have seen a table like this one.
The second reason is that as Russia and Ukraine tend not to be overly covered in comparative studies I was previously forced to go the OECD to get comparative tertiary education data, and thus spent an inordinate amount of time reviewing the data so that it fitted the stroy I was trying to tell. The statistics don't lie they have just been presented to tell my story. So the long and short if you have been unfortunate enough to get a presentation from me on why Ukraine's and Russia's educational system make it a good place to build world-class technology companies you would have seen a table like this one.
The US is clearly ahead of the pack in enrolment in tertiary education but (and I can't find the stats now) has a remarkably low hit rate in mathematics and science, which is probably required to be at the forefront of an innovative society, unless of course you just outsource R&D. If the argument were turned on its head and I posited that Russia's enrolment in tertiary education and dedication to mathematics and science which clearly results in quality meant that Russia was on its way to becoming a major center for innovation then it could be argued that I was exploiting statistics to make an arguable point.
I'll leave my thoughts on education spending, statistics and socialism with this point. The former Soviet Union boasted literacy rate of 99% and spent more (as a % of GDP) on primary and secondary education than any other �developed� country. I struggle to make the sequitor between spending on education and socialism, consumerism, capitalism.
I await Jeff's post on the quality issue.
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