Or at least, so we are told and asked over at LC.
maybe so, but Finland, with a GDP below ours, manages to send 80% of its young people to university on 100% grants.
So why can\’t we do this?
Largely because the 80% number in Finland is entirely bollocks.
Here\’s the OECD numbers for tertiary education in Finland.
Looking at the 25-34 age cohort ( we don\’t want to look at older ages because there\’s been an expansion of tertiary education everywhere over the past generation or two) Finland graduates some 23% through the university system. That\’s a little above the 20% of the OECD average.
However, Finland also graduates another 17% through the polytechnic system (as against 9% for the OECD average). These poly degrees are considered to be rather lower in value than a uni degree (to some extent like the distinction in the US between an Associate or two year degree and a Bachelor\’s or four year one. Not quite, but the holder of a poly degree would usually be asked to do another year of classes before being accepted into a uni Master\’s degree course).
And lumped in with the poly degrees are also all of the vocational and trade schools: graduating from the police college for example. Plus chippies, plumbers and brickies, I have no doubt. (We have a couple of Finnish readers here and I\’d welcome clarification on that point).
So, including all tertiary education, vocational, poly and academic uni, Finland graduates some 40% of the age cohort. Less than the UK does for university alone.
So where does the 80% number come from?
That\’s actually the graduation rate of those who have actually started at one of the tertiary institutions: it ain\’t the proportion of the population that gets degrees, it\’s the proportion of those who start degrees who go on to get degrees.
So, your Friday nugget of information: those who try to tell you that 80% of Finns go to uni are talking bollocks: if not actually innumerate.
Since your link doesn’t work for me, I’ll assume that “LC” stands for Lies & Cant.
“So where does the 80% number come from?”
The same place the Liberal Democrats have shoved their heads.
LC Talks Bollocks Shock. Film at 11.
The number comes from the very poorly worded (as usual) BBC online news.
Headline: “How about 80% going to university?”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-11438140
Third paragraph reads:
“In Finland, 80% of young women are now going to university. It’s currently the highest proportion of graduates in the world.”
See how they give the figure and contradict it in one sentence!