Measuring up – How does the New Zealand’s tertiary education system compare?
Each year, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) publishes Education at a Glance, a collection of indicators that compares the performance of the education systems of its member countries. The indicators in this report give us a good opportunity to view the performance of our system against the systems of other countries. Despite some limitations, the Education at a Glance indicators give us the most reliable and most complete basis for comparison currently available to us.
Measuring up looks at the tertiary education indicators and examines how New Zealand performs on the most important indicators.
Author: Roger Smyth & Warren Smart, Tertiary Sector Performance Analysis & Reporting [Ministry of Education]Date Published: September 2008
5 - Part C: Access to education, participation and progression
5.1 - Access to tertiary education
The OECD’s entry rate indicator places New Zealand very high for access to tertiary education. We rate highest in the OECD for our entry rate to diploma-level tertiary education and a little behind only Australia, Iceland and Sweden in the rate of entry to degrees1. However, the way the indicator is constructed means that countries that have a high proportion of older students and a high proportion of international students rate unrealistically high on this indicator. To illustrate the effects of these distortions, Iceland, one of the leading countries on entry to degrees, has a high proportion of older students and its student body the highest median age in the OECD2, while Australia, which has the highest entry rate, has a large percentage of international students. In the New Zealand data, when international students are removed, the entry rate to degrees falls from 72 percent to 58 percent.
Figure 25 - Net entry rate to degree-level study, 2006, New Zealand and selected OECD countries
Source: OECD (2008) Education at a glance: 2008 OECD indicators, Table A2.4 p68.
5.2 - Enrolment rates in post-school education
New Zealand has relatively high rates of enrolment in post-secondary education at all ages. The graph below compares our tertiary enrolment rates at ages 17, 18, 19 and 20 with other countries and with OECD means.
Figure 26 - Enrolment rates in tertiary education in 2006 at ages 17, 18, 19 and 20 years, New Zealand and selected OECD countries
Source: OECD (2008) Education at a glance:
2008 OECD indicators, Table C2.3, p345.
New Zealand is above the OECD mean at all ages, close to Australia, slightly ahead of the UK but below Canada and, except at age 17, the US.
Likewise, in postsecondary, non-tertiary education, New Zealand’s enrolment rate is ahead of the OECD mean at all of those ages.
However, in part, the reason for this apparent better than average performance is the higher propensity of people in New Zealand in 2006 to leave school at younger ages and, in many cases, to undertake post-school education instead. When one looks at the proportion of the population at those ages in secondary school, New Zealand is below the OECD mean. (Table C2.3).
At ages beyond 20, New Zealand’s enrolment rates are also above the OECD average and slightly below Australia.
Figure 27 - Enrolment rates in tertiary education in 2006 at ages 20 years and over, New Zealand and selected OECD countries
Source: OECD (2008) Education at a glance: 2008 OECD indicators.
New Zealand, like Australia, has a high proportion of part-timers among its students. (Table C2.5, page 347).
5.3 - International students
At 15.5 percent, New Zealand was second only to Australia in 2006 in the percentage of tertiary students who are international students. Comparing 2006 with 2000, New Zealand had the highest growth rate in this indicator. Relatively, a high proportion of international students were studying at diploma level. (Table C3.4, page 371).
A relatively low number of New Zealanders are studying abroad as international students in other OECD and partner countries. (Table C3.2, page 367, 368). Unsurprisingly, nearly half of those who do so are studying in Australia, with the UK and the US between them accounting for more than a third. (Table C3.3, page 369,370).
Figure 28 - Percentage of international students in tertiary education in 2006, selected OECD countries
Source: OECD (2008) Education at a glance: 2008 OECD indicators, Table C3.1, p366.
Footnotes
- Refer to table A2.4 and A2.5, pp 68-69.
- Table A2.4.