Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2019 March 6

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March 6

Determinants of prosperity other than skillbase

I've heard that the UK seems to have relatively low levels of education compared to Germany, and has done so for some time. I am aware of non-negligible differences between educational rankings, but it is my guess that they mean something. I am also well-aware of the high work ethic of the Germans. Given what I know of mineral production (the UK wins here, but not by much), nation branding, and other attributes, there is little obviously to separate the countries other than what I have given. Yet, whilst Germany is richer than the UK it is not so by much, and for some time was poorer. My question: why? What has the UK done well relative to, or had as an advantage over, Germany in the last 20 years?--Leon (talk) 14:57, 6 March 2019 (UTC)

Well, "I have heard" is never the best way to start off any analysis. The differences in educational rankings may be real but our article List of countries by tertiary education attainment shows the UK was 42% and Germany 27%. Comparing 2 year and 4 year show similar stats, UK 49% Germany 30%, 4 year UK 42% Germany 28%. 6 year the UK and Germany are both 14%. These seem to be sourced to the OECD so are probably okay stats. (The graph here is similar [1].)

List of countries by secondary education attainment also shows the UK ahead of Germany for most ages ranges shown except for 25-34 where the UK is 85% and Germany 87%. Admittedly it stops there so it may be that Germany is ahead for those older than 34. Maybe more importantly, the source for this data is unclear. It may be the OECD but I'm not sure. So looking for source data I found [2] and [3] which show the UK is now very slightly ahead of Germany in the 25-34 age range for minimum upper secondary or post-secondary non-tertiary. The tertiary stats are similar to before. I didn't see any info on levels of secondary qualifications outside this age range.

One thing mentioned in those sources (well the Germany one), perhaps in more detail in this older variant [4] is that Germany has a fairly well developed vocational educational system. (Partly discussed in our Dual education system article.) This is probably one reason for their low levels of tertiary education compared to the UK as I'm not sure how many of these are counted as tertiary education. But that leads to the obvious semantical argument namely whether someone with a Bachelor's degree in automotive retail [5] (albeit perhaps this is counted as tertiary) working for BMW is more educated than someone with a degree in history working for Rolls-Royce? What about if they both move on to work for Vodafone?

Incidentally, if you are interested in analysis of Germany's vocational system from a UK perspective it's easy to find sources e.g. [6] which suggests some UK apprenticeships the example given being "dual fuel smart reader installer" would be considered too specific in Germany. (And so probably the person will be considered less educated if that's all they did after secondary school compared to someone in the German system.)

Nil Einne (talk) 16:14, 6 March 2019 (UTC)

BTW, have you considered asking the person or people who keep telling you this sort of stuff what their source or evidence is [7]? Nil Einne (talk) 16:14, 6 March 2019 (UTC)

Doesn't this seem to indicate something?--Leon (talk) 08:23, 7 March 2019 (UTC)

A oousin to "I believe..." ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 16:19, 6 March 2019 (UTC)

One more comment. You can probably find stats which do include the Germany vocational educational system. This source says "about 50% of school leavers" [8] which isn't that far off the 49% for UK two years tertiary except that you need to add whatever percent in Germany who didn't enter the vocational system but do have two years tertiary. And you then need to consider where to fit the various UK non tertiary in to this. (Note school leavers is somewhat of a different measure from population within a certain age range so you'd need to find different stats to start off with, I'm just giving it as an example.)

I think these problems illustrate one of my earlier points which perhaps wasn't clear enough: Comparing systems between countries when there are a number of key differences in the structure is not easy. Actually it occurred to me my earlier 4 year degree stuff was a little weird if it's OECD data since the concept of a 4 year degree, I assume a typical Bachelor's degree, is mostly a North American thing in the OECD. Checking the source, [9], there's actually no mention of 4 year degree equivalent that I can see instead short cycle, Bachelor's, Master's and Doctoral. I suspect therefore this was added to our article by someone familiar with the US system, not recognising that 4 year degree equivalent doesn't mean much to people from plenty of other places. And the 3 vs 4 year illustrate somewhat of a difference in focus in Bachelor's degrees between countries, but whether this means someone with a 4 year US degree is more educated than someone with a 3 year UK degree is complicated.

I also was reminded when reading our article Bachelor's degree#Germany that Germany didn't really have a bachelor's degree until recently, probably a factor in the low levels when considering an age range up to 65. The Bologna Process has made the tertiary systems it affected more comparable, but that's recent and still leaves reasonable chunks of the rest of the system untouched and of course getting back to my earlier point the relative popularity of different parts of the system various from country to country for a variety of reasons.

Nil Einne (talk) 16:48, 6 March 2019 (UTC)

BTW, by rankings do you mean test of school students like PISA? If so, you've mentioned being 'aware' but how closely have you actually looked at the relative difference between rankings? A lot of the press tends to concentrate on how country X is number 20 or heading in the wrong direction or other such concerns, but while such things may be interesting, I question if they're that useful when comparing 2 named countries. For example according to our article Programme for International Student Assessment in 2015, the UK did do worse than Germany in reading and mathematics and ~equal in science (the UK is ranked above Germany). This may seem bad. But then again maths was 492 vs 506. Reading was 498 vs 509. Science both were 509. So the actual difference is fairly small. If we look at previous years, the UK has generally performed worse than Germany in science, fluctuated from beating to losing in reading and lost in maths except for the first year 2003. While you can probably say that the UK has performed slightly worse than Germany on average (although I didn't do the figures), the actual difference seems fairly small. So in so much as they do "mean something", there's no reason they suggest a massive difference. It's not like we're talking about UK vs Singapore here. Nil Einne (talk) 10:15, 11 March 2019 (UTC)