Country Competitiveness Relationship with Higher Education Indicators

Santos Lopez-Leyva; Gary Rhoades

doi:10.4067/S0718-27242016000400007

Authors

Santos Lopez-Leyva College of Economics and International Relations, Universidad Autónoma de Baja California, Campus Tijuana. Tijuana, Baja California http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8463-4718
Gary Rhoades Center for the Study of Higher Education, Department of Educational Policy Studies and Practice, College of Education, University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona.

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.4067/S0718-27242016000400007

Keywords:

higher education, competitiveness, Asian countries, Latin-American countries, quality in higher education, indicators of higher education, World Economic Forum, rankings of countries, competitive advantages, higher education systems

Abstract

This paper reports the performance of global competitiveness and higher education competitiveness between two groups of countries. The first group is formed by four Asian countries; the second one by four Latin American countries. Indicators from the World Economic Forum 2007-2015 are compared. The indicators with the nearest proximity were found in the management quality of the universities, where there was only a five-point difference in favor of the Asian group. The indicator with the widest gap came from the quality of math and sciences education where we found a difference of 104 points. This is congruent with the results of PISA 2012, which showed a difference of 152 points in math.