Something for Canadian and American Schools to Think About

Why High School Graduates in China and India Are More Ready for College

By Deborah Williams

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While American schools are wrestling with budget cuts, school officials in India and China have significantly increased their spending on public education.  The United States still spends more per student than these countries, but China and India’s investment, it seems, has been paying off.  Kelsey Sheehy, writer for the U S News and World Report’s School Notes blog, reports that high school graduates in China and India are better prepared for college than American high school graduates:

• High school students in India and China are going to college and finishing at a higher rate than America’s 50 percent college graduation rate.
• Many of their college graduates are STEM—science, technology, engineering, and math—majors.  China graduates about 1.5 million college students with STEM degrees while the United States graduates less than 500,000 such graduates.

Part of the reason for the disparity seems traceable to programs in lower grade levels.  Ann O’Leary, director of the Children and Families program at the Center for the Next Generation, believes that high school graduates are not getting the level of training needed to succeed in college-level STEM programs.  She suggests the U.S. needs to do the following:

• Improve teacher training
• Provide access to job shadowing and internship experiences to all high school students in STEM courses