2 - Why do we need cross-country Indicators?

Governments and taxpayers make very substantial investments in tertiary education.  In New Zealand, the government spends more than $4 billion on tertiary education.  And students and employers also pay large amounts.  This investment is justified by the expectation that tertiary education makes a positive contribution to our society and to our economy – in other words, that investment is expected to yield a return.  The government expects that a better educated population will have higher skills and will improve productivity and innovation in the economy, while research has shown that countries with higher average levels of education have better health outcomes and lower crime rates.  For individuals, tertiary education qualifications offer a path to better careers, with higher earnings.  And for firms, employees with higher qualifications are likely to have higher skills and hence, offer greater returns.

Therefore, all governments are paying increasing attention to international comparisons as they search for effective policies that enhance individuals’ social and economic prospects and seek to meet rising demands. The indicators published annually in Education at a Glance are intended to help governments, people working in education and the public to see their education systems in the light of the performance of comparable countries.

And international comparisons are especially important for a small country like New Zealand.  New Zealand is not as wealthy as some other OECD countries.  We have a small open economy, with a high reliance on land-based resources.  Therefore, we rely to an unusual extent on innovation to make the most of our resource base.  And all the international evidence suggests that an innovative economy and improvements in productivity depend on a more highly skilled workforce.  And that, in its turn is influenced by the quality of the tertiary education we can offer.

Yet, in international terms, our system is small.  And within some of the sub-sectors – for instance, the universities – we have a homogeneous system.  Therefore we need to see our performance in an international context and to compare our system, its performance, the investment we are making in it and the return we get from it with other countries.

The scope of the indicators

Education at a Glance covers all sectors of education.  This note is confined to the tertiary sector only. The tertiary education indicators in Education at a Glance cover three areas:

• The output and impact of education
• Financial and human resources invested in education
• Access to education, participation and progression
  

This note looks at all three areas, reports on the performance of the New Zealand tertiary system and compares our performance against selected countries.

It should be noted that there are some tertiary education indicators in Education at a Glance that do not include New Zealand.  For the most part, that is because in those cases, we do not hold data on the relevant topic or else the data we do hold is not suitable to meet the indicator definition.

The OECD is working to strengthen its indicators

The OECD’s education indicators are quantitative. They are designed to be internationally comparable. The definitions are agreed by experts in the participating countries.  But indicator construction is complicated.  In some cases, the indicators are less than perfect; there is a trade-off between the ideal indicator and the capacity of countries to supply the appropriate data.  However, as countries’ tertiary education information systems improve, the OECD is working to improve the indicators and to make them more meaningful.

The 2008 edition of Education at a Glance has more reliable and meaningful indicators on the returns to tertiary education and on completion of tertiary education.  Over the next years, the OECD is working towards better access indicators.

A note on definitions

New Zealand has a more inclusive definition of tertiary education than the OECD.  We include all post-secondary education – degrees and diplomas, foundation certificates, industry training and adult and community education as part of our tertiary education system.  The OECD defines tertiary education more narrowly using, as the base, the levels set out in the International Standard Classification of Education (ISCED).  The tertiary education classifications used by the OECD are:

• ISCED 6 – advanced research programmes.  New Zealand includes doctoral enrolments only in this classification.
• ISCED 5A – this includes degree level qualifications at bachelors and masters levels.
• ISCED 5B – this includes qualifications typically of two years’ duration that develop vocational skills.  Most New Zealand non-degree level diplomas offered in New Zealand fit into this category.
  

When the OECD talks about tertiary education, it is referring to ISCED levels 5 and 6.  This excludes most of the certificate level enrolments offered in New Zealand tertiary education providers.  Those certificates are classified by the OECD as ’postsecondary non-tertiary’ and some are classified as upper secondary.

In this note, we have focussed mainly on tertiary education on the OECD’s definition – ISCED 5 and 6 – though there is some reference to post-secondary non-tertiary in places.

When discussing ISCED 5A, we have mainly used the term ‘degree level’, while ISCED 5B is referred to as ‘diploma level’.  When an indicator combines the results for ISCED 5A and 6, we refer to this as ‘degree level and above’.

A note on the analytical approach used here

Thirty-six countries’ data are included in the 2008 edition of Education at a Glance. These include 30 OECD member countries plus a number of ‘partner countries’ such as Brazil, Israel, Estonia and the Russian Federation.

In the analysis that follows we have tended to focus on a relatively small subset of the countries – those with whom we share aspects of our educational culture and with whom we have usually sought to compare ourselves. These include a number of English speaking countries – Australia, Canada, the UK and the US.  We have also included Japan as a country in our region, plus four Scandinavian countries – Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden – as they have taken a contrasting direction to New Zealand and as they usually show up well in international comparisons. In many indicators, the OECD gives the mean of the OECD countries
We don’t report on all the indicators, only on those that are significant and that shed light on our performance. For the full detail of the report, it is necessary to consult the full document and also the technical notes and supplementary data held on the OECD’s website.