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UNESCO – Global Education Digest 2009 [International]

[Source: UNESCO Institute for Statistics, October 2009]

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) 2009 Global Education Digest (GED) presents the latest education statistics from primary to tertiary education levels for more than 200 countries.  The report analyses the rising demand for tertiary education which has seen an average annual increase of 4.6% since 1970. With demand continuing to rise, particularly in the last seven years, the report considers issues like sources of finance, student mobility and fields of education studied. Statistics show that gross graduation ratios for vocationally-orientated courses are highest in Central, Eastern and Western Europe as well as in North America.  Available data (from 80 countries) shows potential gaps in the supply and demand of skills and the capacity within countries to produce high-skilled labour. For example, the distribution of graduates shows the most common fields of study are social sciences, business, law, construction, engineering and manufacturing. In contrast agriculture and services attracts relatively low student numbers with only a few countries reporting a share of 5% of graduates in these fields.

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