UK slips to fifteenth place for number of graduates

Britain has slipped to 15th place in the world rankings for the number of graduates it produces from being 3rd in 2000. 

Whilst Finland has 63 percent of its young people graduating, the UK trails behind Poland and the Czech Republic with just 35 percent.

The report, by the Organisation for Economic and Co-operation and Development (OECD), comes at a time when British Universities are dealing with cuts in funding.

A £200m cut was announced by George Osborne for the rest of the UK while Scotland are receiving what The National Union of Students in Scotland believe is a "cut in real terms", with an overall 1.2 percent increase in last years budget.

The OECD report shows that Britain is failing to keep pace with other nations before the cuts were announced.  

Dr Wendy Piatt, Director General of the Russell Group, said:

“Whilst we can be rightfully proud that the UK’s leading universities are considered to be among the very best anywhere, without more investment in higher education, as the OECD figures signal, the UK risks jeopardising the competitive advantage which has made its universities the envy of the world.

“UK research-intensive universities currently punch well above their weight in the international sphere but are under-resourced in comparison with their international competitors. Looking just at public expenditure on higher education, the UK’s investment of 0.7% of GDP is one of the lowest in the OECD (the average is 1.0 percent). The UK’s total expenditure on HE amounts to just 1.3 percent of its GDP--a figure which is outpaced not only by the US and Australia and Canada but also by Korea and Japan.”

In Scotland, roughly 70,000 graduate per year from higher education, with less than half able to find full-time employment of any kind soon after completing their studies.

A spokesman from the Universities of Scotland told The Journal :

"Although the OECD does not produce seperate figures for Scotland, there's an important message here for policy makers in all parts of the UK: competitor nations are making substantial investments in order to equip large numbers of their young people with the graduate level skills which will be critical in attracting global investments and generating economic growth over the next twenty years.

"The figures underline the fact that we cannot afford to become complacent and let others take the advantage we previously held."