Higher Education

One more measure of innovation–and the changing pattern of innovation worldwide. This time from the Economist in a recent article, which describes the OECD’s new approach to measuring the comparative quality of universities internationally. What caught my eye was this graph:

What is shows is trends in cross-boarder higher education–that is, the number of students who travel to another country for college and graduate school. This is a rough measure of preparation for innovation, in the sense that it corresponds to the net inflow or outflow from a country of intellectual capital.

And… surprise, surprise… the US market share is down. So is Britain’s and so is Germany’s. The gains come from other OECD countries (France, Australia, Japan, Russia, Canada, and the most dramatic gain from New Zealand).

Now overall, of course, everyone benefits when training for creative thinking is more widely available. But it is one more way in which countries–like the US–that enjoy a historical advantage in knowledge work need to recognize that they need to think about education in innovative ways, or risk falling and then being left behind.