The British Paradox Again

We have been told many times before that British universities are punching above their weight and are outperforming their international counterparts. Year after year they do extremely well in the QS and THE world rankings although perhaps not as well in the Shanghai ARWU.

This excellent performance is in glaring contrast to the well documented decline in the cognitive skills of young people in the United Kingdom. A recent publication from the OECD on youth, skills and employability  show that the proportion of 16-39 olds in the UK (actually England and Northern Ireland) with low literacy skills was well above the OECD average and slightly above the United States. Only Spain and Italy did worse. Not unexpectedly, the top performers here were Japan, Korea and Finland.

What is even more frightening is that the UK is very distinctive in that the proportion of 16-29 olds with poor literacy skills is lower than that of 30-54 years. In every other country except Japan, where literacy is very high among both groups,  and Norway, literacy has risen among the younger generation.

For numeracy skills of 16-29 year olds, the UK is again well below the OECD average. The share of young people with limited numeracy is higher than any other country except Italy and the US. Again there is a decline from the 30-54 year olds.

The OECD has also published data on problem solving abilities in technology-rich environments. This time the UK, like every country assessed, has improved over time but still is behind everyone else except  the US, Ireland and Poland.

So how can British students be so bad at literacy, numeracy and problem solving when the universities are, according to international rankers, so brilliant?

Some suggestions.

Perhaps, the rankings are biased towards British universities.

Perhaps, British higher education is highly differentiated with a few outstanding institutions that get high scores in the global league tables and a mass of others that cannot even squeeze into the 400s or 500s or do not even try.

Perhaps, it is just a question of time and in the next few years British universities will collapse under the weight of thousands of students with low cognitive skills who must be admitted to keep revenues flowing.