You would never guess

An online business blog, 24/7 Wall Street, is reporting the list of the 10 most educated countries in the world, based on the percent of their population with a college degree.

I would never have guessed the top educated country -- and I doubt you would either.  Here is the list of the top 10 -- in reverse order:

10.  Australia  38.3%
  9.  Finland  39.3%
  8.  New Zealand  39.4%
  7.  United Kingdom  39.4%
  6.  Korea  40.4%
  5.  United States  42.%
  4.  Israel  46.4%
  3.  Japan  51.3%
  2.  Canada  51.3%
  1.  Russia  53.5%

Russia #1.   I would not have guessed they were even in the top 10.   You never hear much about their universities or their people as scholars.   But it's the breadth of education, not the excellence of the few, that this measures.    

Another measure they made was of the percentage of gross domestic product that each country spends on education.   Russia's was the lowest of the top 10  at 4.9%, compared to the U.S. at 7.5%  and Korea at 7.6%.

Interesting.  Despite our relative high standing in degrees, we score worse than most developed nations in high-level math and reading skills.

Sounds kind of like our health care stats:   we spend more and get less.

Ralph