The share of graduates aged 30 to 34 fell to 28.7 percent.
Eurostat, the primary statistical body of the European Union, has released data showing that the EU has almost reached the targeted share of university educated citizens aged 30 to 34 of 40 percent. On the other hand, the percentage in Croatia continued to decline, and in 2017 it reached just 28.7 percent, reports Jutarnji List on May 1, 2018.
Worse than Croatia were only Italy (26.9 percent) and Romania (25.6 percent), while the best countries in Europe were Luxembourg (58 percent), Cyprus (55.8 percent), Ireland (52.7 percent) and Sweden (51.3 percent). The EU 28 average was 39.9 percent.
Croatia has set itself a goal of reaching 35 percent by 2020. However, data indicate that the share has been in constant decline since 2014 when Croatia achieved a share of 32.1 percent. In 2015, the percentage dropped to 30.8 percent, in 2016 to 29.3 percent, and the negative trend continued last year. Data show that in 2008 the share was just 18.5 percent, reaching 24.5 percent only two years later.
Although this shows there are significant variations in the number of university graduates in one year, it is clear that Croatia has been falling back since 2014 and is currently near the bottom of the European Union.
Velimir Šonje, the director of Arhivanalitika, said that “the lag of thirty percentage points behind Luxembourg, Cyprus and Ireland and more than a dozen points behind the EU average almost guarantees relative long-term stagnation because education is one of the key determinants of long-term ability for economic growth.”
Substantial expansion of higher education in Croatia started in the period from 1970 to 1990, when the total number of students increased by 10,000 – from 60,000 to 70,000. By 2000, it had risen to 100,000, and from 2000 to 2014 it increased further by more than 60 percent – from 100,000 to 161,000. As a result, the number of graduates rose 150 percent – from 13,500 to nearly 34,000.
However, the worrisome fact is that Croatia, according to the European Commission’s 2014 Education and Training Monitor survey, is one of the EU member states with the highest shares of students who do not complete their education. The percentage is currently estimated at more than 40 percent. The main reasons for this are insufficient academic abilities and inadequate financial resources.
Interestingly, this is, at least to some extent, contradicted by another set of Eurostat data, which show that Croatia has the lowest rate of leaving schooling at an early age. In 2017, the share was 3.1 percent, and in the EU the average was 10.6 percent. Croatia has already achieved the goal to bring the percentage down to below four percent, while the EU has not yet met the target of 10 percent. Although very low rates of leaving schooling at an early age and the high rates of continuing education after secondary education are the main features of the Croatian education system, Croatia’s 15-year-old students achieve poor results in international tests of maths, literacy and reading.
It is clear, therefore, that Croatia’s educational system, as far as the quality and the outcomes are concerned, is not competitive in the European Union.
Translated from Jutarnji List (reported by Frenki Laušić).
