Education in States and Nations: 1991
The students in secondary and higher education are generally much older than in Central and Southern European countries and in North America. The enrollment rates for higher education, for example, are higher at the age of 25 than at the age of 20.
The figures comprise both new entrants into higher education-level programs and persons who have previously been enrolled at this level.
The preparatory classes for the Grandes coles are classified at the university level.
Data include participation in all colleges that offer 3- or 4-year programs leading to a special college degree in several fields.
Data refer to participation in universities which offer 4- or 5-year programs leading to a university degree. Colleges of Arts are not included here but in the non-university higher education level because of technical reasons. There is no figure for the graduate-school level because doctoral programs have been organized by separate research institutes, not by universities. Universities offer post-graduate courses only for adults who return to education after having gained work experience.
The data have been influenced by the use of population figures for 18 year-olds, which were based on estimates supplied to OECD prior to the publication of the final results of the Census of Population for 1991. The revised population totals for this group indicate a ratio of new entrants to higher education (full-time) of 35.3 percent, by comparison with the 33.8 percent in the text.
The figure for higher education does not correspond to the sum of the figures for non-university higher education and university education because the total for new entrants excludes new entrants into university higher education who previously entered non-university higher education or other university programs, and vice versa.
Figures include a small proportion of new entrants who were previously enrolled in universities.
New entrants are home students only (figures on new entrants from overseas are not available).
Source for the U.S. country-level entry-ratio figure in Indicator 11 is the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System's (IPEDS) Fall Enrollment survey, and not the OECD's INES Project. Overestimation had occurred in the U.S. country-level figure sent to INES because the figure included all new entrants, not just first-time entrants. Thus, students re-starting their education program after an extended leave were included in the U.S. country figure. For the U.S. states, with their figures drawn from the IPEDS, however, all new entrants were indeed, "first-time freshman." There's no overestimation problem with the figures used here, because both the U.S. and the state figures come from the same source, the IPEDS.
Age-specific enrollment data for the United States and the U.S. states contain some proportion of students of unknown age -- 10 to 15 percent for non-university higher education and less than 5 percent for university higher education. These students are apportioned over all the age levels according to the proportion of total enrollment that each age level has.
Due to the presence of several large, private universities in the District of Columbia that draw students primarily from outside the District, the participation ratio for the District may be misleading. Many of the enrolled students either live outside the District and are not counted in the age-range population, or moved to the District solely for the purpose of attending school.
In the United States and some other countries, educational institutions exist that operate for profit, offering focused educational programs that lead to specific vocational certificates, usually in periods of less than two years. These institutions are excluded from education data for the United States, and for some other countries as well.
See technical notes for Indicator 8.
See note on
enrollment reference groups and graduation and entry reference
ages: indicators 8, 11, 23, 24, and 29.
Staff employed in education
