Canada and China’s Education in the World
There has been a slew of reports on international education and university rankings over the past few weeks. Taken together, they provide for an interesting picture of the state of general and university education in Canada along with strides made by China’s post-secondary education.
The OECD’s Education at a Glance 2012, its annual review of educational systems around the world, gave Canada top marks for the highest percentage of its population with a college or university education at 51%, up from 36% just 15 years ago. Canada is the only country in the world that surpassed the 50% mark. The next nine most educated countries were Israel (46%), Japan (45%), US (42%), New Zealand (41%), South Korea (40%), UK (38%) tied with Finland and Australia, and Ireland (37%).
Canada achieved this with less spending on education as a portion of GDP (6.1%) than the OECD average (6.3%). Yet, while Canada is on top overall, it ranks third in post-secondary education of young adults between the ages of 25 and 34, indicating that other countries are catching up fast.
In terms of primary and high school education, perhaps counter-intuitively, Canadian children aged 7 to 14 spent far more time in class (7,363 hours) than their OECD counterparts (6,621 hours). In contrast to the US, Canadian educators have made major headway in reducing the number of students dropping out of high school, cutting rates by 1/2 to 1 in 10 from 15 years ago. However, in the wake of the global financial crisis, there has been a slight rise in youth unemployment and youths not taking classes or training (13.5% in 2010) which still fairs better than the US (16.1%) or the UK (15.9%).
Canada remains a favoured destination for international college and university students, witnessing a doubling of numbers within a decade. By far, students from China made up the largest group, accounting for nearly 1/4 of the total international student population, followed by the US (7.4%), 6.1% from France, and 4.8% from India. By contrast, China had more than 292,000 foreign students in 2011 and plans to nearly double that within a few years.
A couple influential UK-based world university rankings are of interest, too. Without going into the ups and downs and differing methodologies leading to considerably divergent outcomes, the performance of Canadian universities in the top 200 was mixed while Greater China universities made notable advances. QS placed far more mainland Chinese universities in its top 200 than THE list and Peking U. overtook U. of Tokyo for the first time, whereas on THE ranking, it is 19 spots behind the top Japanese institution. U. of T. dropped two spots in THE with McGill slipping even further. But, significantly, apart from the 6 top Canadian institutions that made both lists, Western Ontario, Queens and Waterloo made the QS while Ottawa and Victoria made it into THE top 200.
QS World University Ranking Times THE World University ranking
Top Canadian universities
McGill U. (#18) U. of Toronto (#21)
U. of Toronto (#19) UBC (#30)
UBC (#45) McGill U. (#34)
U. of Alberta (#108) Universite de Montreal (#84)
Universite de Montreal (#114) McMaster U. (#88)
McMaster U. (#152) U. of Alberta (#121)
U. of Western Ontario (#173) U. of Ottawa (#171)
Queen’s U. (#175) U. of Victoria (#196)
U. of Waterloo (#191)
Top Greater China universities
U. of Hong Kong (#23) U. of Hong Kong (tied for #35)
Hong Kong U. of Science and Technology (#33) Peking U. (#46)
Chinese U. of Hong Kong (#40) Tsinghua U. (#52)
Peking U. (#44) Hong Kong U. of Science and Technology (#65)
Tsinghua U. (#48) Chinese U. of Hong Kong (#124)
National Taiwan U. (#80) National Taiwan U. (#134)
Fudan U. (#90) City U. of Hong Kong (#182)
Shanghai Jiaotong U. (#125)
Hong Kong Polytechnic U. ($159)
Nanjing U. (#168)
Zhejiang U. (#170)
U. of Science and Technology of China (#186)
National Tsinghua U. (Taiwan) (#192)
Commentaries accompanying the two UK rankings shared some analysis on Canadian and Chinese mainland universities: The slide of Canadian universities has something to do with the Canadian higher educational system that spreads core funding relatively evenly and equitably, based primarily on student enrolment, as opposed to the European and Asian strategy of supporting elite institutions, said Phil Baty, editor for THE ranking.
Since the start of the 2000s, the Chinese Ministry of Education has been funneling a lot of university research funding (supporting output and attracting researchers from home and abroad, mainly returning ‘turtles’ – Chinese (holding or not foreign citizenship) with foreign PhDs and extensive research experience) to the elite ‘C9’ schools, China’s ‘Ivy League’, almost all of which rose in the QS 2012 general and Asian rankings. According to Eurostat and the OECD, in 2010, funding in China reached US$12 billion, surpassing the UK, and is rising by 15% per year. But, in spite of impressive growth, China’s per student spending in higher education lags far behind the West. In the US, universities spend on average $30,000 per student, 6.67 times that in China ($4,500).
Despite their numbers on the QS top 200, Chinese universities have a long ways to go in the area of quality of research before they can join the super-elite of world top 20 schools. Citing Peking U. as an example, QS says although its faculty/student ratio is impressive and professors are more productive writing research papers than all Asian universities save Seoul National U., it is lackluster citation ratios that hold it back. On QS’s 2012 Asian ranking, Fudan U. scored the highest with a score of 88.6, Peking U. next with 84.7, and Tsinghua 51.7, placing them 43rd, 53rd, and 136th respectively in the world.