Education at a Glance

According to the annual report from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, American fifty-five- to sixty-four-year-olds lead the world in percentage of high school graduates for their age group, whereas current twenty-five- to thirty-four-year-olds rank a distant tenth. The nation’s 2005 graduation rate is even worse; it ranks a dismal eighteenth of twenty-three OECD countries. Similarly, although the United States continues to be a leader in attaining university degrees, the rate of attainment has grown by only 2 percent over three generations, which is less than one fifth the rate of growth in the average OECD country.