What Is College Enrollment Like Around The World?

When we think of college, we often think only of the United States. However there are colleges across the planet, in every country and each country has its own statistics for how many people enroll in college. Generally, the number of people who enroll in college in their lifetimes is a good indication of just how developed the country is. The more developed countries with a higher standard of living have a larger college enrollment than those that are developing with a low standard of living.

First of all, college enrollment is going up. Roughly 57 percent of the young people on earth go to college, which is a whopping 20 percent increase over just 10 years ago.

Here is some information on what what is college enrollment like around the world.

Greece ranks the highest with 68 percent of its young people pursuing higher education. In fact Greece ranks a full 23 percent above the next highest, which is Belgium with 45 percent. The United States comes in third with 41 percent. The next highest is France and Ireland, who both have 38 percent to round out the top five. Canada comes in sixth with 36 percent, followed by Spain with 35 percent. Australia takes the number eight spot with 34 percent of its young people in post-secondary schools, while the United Kingdom and New Zealand round out the top ten with 33 percent and 31 percent respectively.

We will not go over the countries that have zero percent of their young people in higher education because there are several of them. The worst is Iceland with one percent. Denmark is a bit better with three percent, and Italy and Switzerland are in the bottom four with four and six percent. Germany rounds out the bottom five with either percent. The next five lowest are Sweden with 12 percent, Turkey with 13 percent, Norway with 13 percent, Mexico with 14 percent and Austria with 14 percent.

It should be noted that this is based on a per capita rate and does not mean that not everyone goes to college. This is simply the percentage of young people who go to college following high school. Some wait a few years before they go to college, especially in Europe.