Show table of content Hide table of content
The latest world ranking on the level of education of the adult population reveals marked differences between countries. France, despite its well-established higher education system, finds itself ahead of many nations… some of them unexpected.
Education is often referred to as a pillar of the Republic, a fundamental foundation on which a country’s economic, cultural and technological future rests. France, with its grandes écoles, its historic universities and its attachment to knowledge, likes to think of itself as a cultured, educated and well-educated nation. But in the face of the raw data of recent years, this image is crumbling. An international ranking produced as part of the CBRE Study by CBRE Research using the latest available data has just established the list of countries with the highest percentage of adults with higher education qualifications.
And there’s a big surprise: France doesn’t even feature in the world’s top 20. Worse still, it is being beaten by many European, Asian and even South American nations.
While we might expect our country to lead the way in an area as important as education, the figures reveal a surprisingly modest position: with only 28.1% of its working population aged between 25 and 64 holding a degree at licence level or higher (equivalent to a Bachelor’s degree in the United States, a bac+4 corresponding to a bac+3 in France), France is outstripped not only by its direct neighbours, but also by countries with far less media coverage in this field.
Unexpected leaders and France lagging behind
The top three already set the tone: Ireland, Switzerland and Singapore are the three countries with the highest proportion of graduates. In Ireland, over 52% of adults have a university degree. This is an impressive figure, illustrating the massive investment that the country has made in higher education since the 1990s, often in conjunction with its strategy of economic attractiveness.
Switzerland is just behind at 46%, closely followed by Singapore at 45%. The UK, Belgium and the Netherlands are also well over 40%, as are Australia, Israel and Sweden.
Even Poland, Denmark and South Korea score better than France.
Even more striking is the fact that the United States, often criticised for its unequal and costly system, still manages to post a graduate rate of over 40%, with an impressive total of 78 million graduates.
It would be tempting to reassure ourselves by saying that other major nations are as badly placed as we are. But here again, the facts qualify this assumption. Admittedly, China and India are at the bottom of the table if we look at the proportions: respectively 6.9% and 14.2% of the adult population have higher education qualifications. But on a per capita basis, this still represents 88 million graduates in China and almost 140 million in India.
Education and economic prosperity: a fairly obvious link
The rankings do more than just give out good and bad points: they also reflect, more broadly, the societal choices and economic models adopted by each country.
The nations that dominate this list are often those that have invested heavily in the democratisation of higher education, seeing it as a direct lever for growth, innovation and competitiveness. Widespread access to higher education makes it possible to train a workforce that is better qualified, more mobile, and therefore better able to meet the needs of a constantly changing economic world. And the results are there for all to see: the most highly educated countries are often also those with one of the highest per capita GDPs. In France, the university reforms, the Parcoursup debates and the massification of higher education have not been enough to reverse the trend, since the system is still struggling to produce an educational elite in sufficient numbers, while continuing to exclude a significant proportion of the population from higher education.
News A female sea lion refuses to mate with a male, causing a fight and the closure of the zoo.
The rankings highlight a worrying lag in the face of ever-intensifying global economic competition. Unless there is a massive and structured upsurge, France could well continue to fall back in the coming years, leaving others to take advantage of a workforce that is better educated and better prepared for the challenges of the 21st century.
