A recurring question in our course is who the next leader in higher education (in Asia) will be. The World Economic Forum recently released an article on countries with the most doctoral graduates across the world. Unsurprisingly, the current leader in higher education – the US – leaves the rest of the world behind by a wide margin.

Based on this, do you think we should add the number of PHDs a country is producing to our discussion on who the next leader in higher education will be? While you may find shortcomings of using this approach based on our country-level class discussions, do you think it will be useful in combination with other indicators? If yes, which ones?

In your discussion, you can consider that according to this measure, India, followed by Japan and South Korea, are most likely to emerge as leaders.

Read the full article, which includes details on the source countries of PHDs here: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/02/countries-with-most-doctoral-graduates/

Image source – https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/02/countries-with-most-doctoral-graduates/