Going by some map I saw a few days ago, the US actually is among the leading countries in percentage of the population with one university degree (or more).
I don't think that map is correct.
SUMMARY: the official Dutch numbers contradict this map; and it's likely the map is an incorrect representation based on a misunderstanding of the education-structure and -level in non-US countries.
Let me first say, I only looked at the Dutch data (because I'm Dutch). The data I found was from 2017, so It's a bit more recent, and some discrepancies might be explained by that. But...the original map (
https://ourworldindata.org/tertiary-education) states that in the Netherlands tertiary education was at 15.63% as opposed to the 26.76% in the USA. So being Dutch I was quite puzzled with that. Because I kinda feel I have some grasp on the world I live in. Both within my frame of reference, and somewhat outside. Though I'm absolutely certain there are a lot of people that I that are not represented in 'my' world.
Anyway, I started looking at some numbers. A Dutch
TV-news-site from 2017, the Dutch Center for Statistics, and a
government-site on education in numbers. And what I found was quite different from the map.
First of all, you need to understand that in the Netherlands - as with most countries - there a several levels of tertiary education. For simplicities sake just refer to them as low, medium, high, and university (and there's of course also PhD's and stuff). I'm going to use the government site, as it had lower numbers than the news-site (numbers that prove my point less well). If you look solely at the higher education - which, as I said, is a subset of the Dutch tertiary education - you see that in 2010 the actual numbers were 17.4 + 9.4 = 26.8%. In 2019 those numbers have risen to 20.6 + 11.9 = 32.5%. As I said, the actual numbers are higher because we only look at the higher tertiary education (simplified: the bachelor- and master-levels). The levels are of course different, if you solely look at the master-levels (11.9% in 2019). But...
a. that's not what the map claimed to be about, and b. you cannot directly compare universities in one country to another. For example you would not have - to be kinda on topic - have a Trump university. In the Netherlands this would be considered a medium level business school (most likely not even a higher-level business school because of the way it was organized). As an analogy, compare the term 'professor'. In the Netherlands it's a title reserved for a very select group. In simplified (though slightly incorrect) terms he's the chair of a scientific department (although a departement at a Dutch university would be something different from this department). In some countries, however, anyone with tenure is referred to as a professor. And then there are even countries (and I think that might be true for the US as well) where anyone teaching at an academic institute is called a professor. Which - to me - makes no sense at all...but that's because of my Dutch background.
So yeah...anyway, I understand the confusion. Also, the map was based on the data from
Barro and
Lee. Who just happen to both be associated with Harvard University in the USA. So I understand why their data would be skewed towards the US's approach to education. I'm not claiming their data is wrong (though I trust the official Dutch numbers much more). I'm just saying it doesn't measure what the map claimed it does.
Finally - and most importantly - I do not want to be a moderator, and I think Snarky, Wham, Blondbeard and everyone else here who still knows me, knows I would do a terrible job and would never offer it it me.