Problems with international measures of education

Comparative studies often use standard measures of educational attainment. Each country’s indigenous educational credentials are reclassified into a standard set of categories. Because the indigenous credentials differ among countries, the reclassification process varies greatly, and it differs depending on which standard classification system is used. In a review of two comparative studies using two different standard classification systems, three observations were made: 1) translating the indigenous credentials into the standard categories can lead to very different distributions of similar countries’ populations in the standard categories. 2) Reclassifying the indigenous credentials into the standard categories appears to follow different decision rules in different countries. 3) The heterogeneity of the indigenous credentials combined into the standard categories tends to distort cross-country similarities and differences. We discuss the weaknesses of the two standard sets of categories and call for further efforts to improve them.