Tertiary Education Overview

Tertiary education refers to all formal post-secondary education, including public and private universities, colleges, technical training institutes, and vocational schools. Tertiary education is instrumental in fostering growth, reducing poverty, and boosting shared prosperity. A highly skilled workforce, with lifelong access to a solid post-secondary education, is a prerequisite for innovation and growth: well-educated people are more employable and productive, earn higher wages, and cope with economic shocks better.

Tertiary education benefits not just the individual, but society as a whole. Graduates of tertiary education are more environmentally conscious, have healthier habits, and have a higher level of civic participation. Also, increased tax revenues from higher earnings, healthier children, and reduced family size all build stronger nations. In short, tertiary education institutions prepare individuals not only by providing them with adequate and relevant job skills, but also by preparing them to be active members of their communities and societies.

The economic returns for tertiary education graduates are the highest in the entire educational system – an estimated 17% increase in earnings as compared with 10% for primary and 7% for secondary education. These high returns are even greater in Sub-Saharan Africa, at an estimated 21% increase in earning for tertiary education graduates.

As the youth population continues to swell and graduation rates through elementary and secondary education increase dramatically, especially in regions like South Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East and North Africa, there is an intensifying demand for expanded access to tertiary education of good quality. Diversification of institution types and delivery modalities will become increasingly more central to meeting this expanded demand. Tertiary technical and vocational education and training, as one example, can provide an effective and efficient complement to traditional university studies in providing students with skills and knowledge relevant to the labor market.

Governments are increasingly recognizing that the entire educational system – from early childhood through tertiary education – must reflect and be responsive to rapidly evolving social and economic demands and needs within an expanding globalized knowledge economy, which increasingly demands a better-trained, more skilled, and adaptable workforce.

There are around 222 million students enrolled in tertiary education globally, up from 100 million in 2000. In Latin America and the Caribbean, the number of students in tertiary education programs has increased since the early 2000’s, but quality concerns remain. In Sub-Saharan Africa, enrollments have doubled every twenty years since the late 1970s. This massive growth remains critical as a student with a tertiary education degree in the region will earn more than twice as much as a student with just a high school diploma over a lifetime, though, of course, a variety of factors such as social capital and networks, institution quality, and academic program selection are among the factors that lead to notable heterogeneity of outcomes at for individual students in every country.

Across the expanding pool of graduates of tertiary education, matching the skills developed today to the needs of the labor market of both today and of the future remains a major challenge. At the same time, expanded enrollments increase the strain on publicly funded institutions of higher learning, and many countries with limited resources are struggling to finance the growing needs of a larger student body, without compromising the quality of their educational offerings. Tertiary education also remains out of reach for many of the world’s poorest and most marginalized. In Latin America and the Caribbean, on average, the poorest 50% of the population only represented 25% of tertiary education students in 2013. In Sub-Saharan Africa, only 9% of the traditional aged cohort for tertiary education continues from secondary to tertiary education – the lowest regional enrollment rate in the world.

Countries all over the world have undertaken major restructuring of their tertiary education systems to enhance their reach and effectiveness. However, progress has been uneven. All countries engaging in strategic reforms of their tertiary sectors benefit from ensuring that their national strategies and policies prioritize equitable access, improved learning and skills development, efficient retention, and considerations of the employment and education outcomes sought by graduates and the labor market. Both policies and academic degrees need to be strategically tailored to fit the needs of the local society and economy. Only then can governments realize the gains in primary and secondary school attainment through tertiary education access and progression and turn these successes into increased and sustained economic and social development.

Last Updated: Apr 09, 2024

STRATEGIC POLICY ADVICE

As the world seeks to build back better into a new era of green and equitable economic growth, tertiary education systems are at the heart of the big transformations required throughout economies and societies. Tertiary education is vital for the development of human capital and innovation. Strategic and effective investments in tertiary education can serve every country – from the poorest to the richest – by developing its talent and leadership pool, generating, and applying knowledge to local and global challenges, and participating in the global knowledge economy. Effective tertiary education systems ensure that countries have well-trained doctors, nurses, teachers, managers, engineers, and technicians who are the main actors of effective education and health service delivery and public and private sector development.

The imperative for investing in tertiary education derives from two major questions: What are the benefits of investing, and what are the consequences of not investing? The benefits include higher employment levels (that is, lower levels of unemployment), higher wages, greater social stability, increased civic engagement, and better health outcomes. Even more significant and, perhaps, revealing, is examining what happens when countries underinvest in their tertiary education systems. The consequences of underinvestment include brain drain and talent loss, limited access to applied research capacity for local problem solving, limitations to economic growth due to low levels of skills in the workforce, low-quality teaching and learning at every level of education, and, perhaps most glaringly, expanded wealth inequality within and among nations, with those investing proportionately more experiencing resultant growth rates far outpacing those with lower levels of investment and strategic development.

Key elements of strategic policy advice for tertiary education

Decades of insufficient and ineffective investment in postsecondary education and the advanced skills developed through higher learning opportunities have only exacerbated global equity gaps. The World Bank’s STEERing Tertiary Education: Toward Resilient Systems that Delivery for All policy approach paper describes the approach of the World Bank to support the development of effective, equitable, efficient, and resilient tertiary education systems and institutions.

The paper seeks to: (i) reinforce the imperative that every country – regardless of level of development – invest thoughtfully and strategically in diversified, well-articulated, and inclusive tertiary education systems; (ii) provide a framework for policymakers and other tertiary education stakeholders to examine critical traits responding to the needs for advanced skills and lifelong learning in support of growth and development and key interventions for tertiary education systems in the decades ahead; (iii) examine the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the global tertiary education sector and share ideas that promote a resilient recovery from the crisis; and (iv) provide key information about the decades of commitment the World Bank has shown to utilizing tertiary education for sustainable development, including context, concepts, and scale of the World Bank’s operational and analytical work.

Within this steering framework and with a view to turning the challenges wrought by the COVID-19 crisis into opportunities for impactful reforms, this paper encourages tertiary education policymakers and stakeholders to STEER their tertiary systems and institutions toward greater relevance and impact, utilizing five framing principles:

I. Strategically diversified systems — supporting all postsecondary institutions, ensuring agile, articulated pathways and diversity of forms, functions, and missions

Developing future-oriented strategies that center on a strong contribution of tertiary education not only to growth and competitiveness but also to social cohesion and human development more broadly for the tertiary education sector, subsectors, and institutions. This is an agenda for high- and middle-income countries but is particularly important for fragile and low-income countries that need to kick-start the technological innovation and adaption engine and provide the young generation a productive and peaceful future.
Positioning tertiary education in a lifelong learning context with flexible pathways, second-chance options, and greater adaptability to the needs and opportunities afforded by employers, civil society, and governments. This means permeability across pathways and providers, modularization of learning offers, and student-centered credit systems to allow for flexible pathways as well as bridging and mentoring programs to boost tertiary remedial education to give everyone a good start and adequate support in tertiary education.

II. Technology — designed and applied in a purposeful and equitable manner

Harnessing the power of technology to improve teaching and research capacity while simultaneously acknowledging and countering the impact of expanding digital divides. With tertiary education sectors massively expanding across the globe and low-income groups and countries trailing behind, technology might be the only way to effectively ensure equity and resilience.
Building a digital ecosystem with the help of National Research and Education Networks (NRENs) and effective collaboration across government portfolios. Harnessing the power of technology means that tertiary education institutions not only profit from digitalization but also advance digitalization through the development of digital skills, and application of digitalization across its functions and related research and development.

III. Equity — a universal approach to the benefits and opportunities of postsecondary learning

Acknowledging that inequity is a form of injustice.
Acting to ensure that equity and inclusion in access and success are a driving ethos for an effective and relevant tertiary education system.

IV. Efficiency — a goal-oriented, effective use of resources

Improving information systems so that sectors, subsectors, and institutions can be managed and enhanced utilizing evidence and sound information.
Devising and deploying governance, financing, and quality assurance instruments that are designed to weather the current and potential future crises.
- For financing, this means, for example, that systems and institutions diversify their funding base and reduce dependency on a single income source (which will require revisiting questions of cost-recovery and are thinking of student grant and loan schemes in many countries) and use innovative funding mechanisms.
- For quality assurance, this means that remote options for accreditation and evolution are established and applied when the environment requires such agility in ensuring quality under all conditions.
- For governance, this means ensuring the external governance — legislative and ministerial oversight — and institutional governance — boards and oversight bodies — are developed and operated in such a manner that promotes effective connections with external actors and the world of work and allows for rapid innovations to be tested and embraced in such a way that institutions can continue their operations within the scope of their charters and missions.

V. Resilience — the ability to persist, flourish, and deliver agreed goals despite adversity

Acknowledging the need for resilience planning, by taking stock of the successes and failures of the COVID-19 response at the systems and institutional levels and analyzing options that would have mitigated the failures.
Utilizing adaptive governance frameworks to embed immediate, strategic resilience interventions to address significant short- and long-term challenges facing tertiary education systems and institutions as a result of the shocks brought on by the pandemic, including diminished resources for institutions, personal and academic challenges for institutions and students, demand for improved infrastructure to support continued distance and blended learning models, reduced mobility placing pressures to improve regional and local tertiary institutions, questions of sustainability of funding models, and much more.

These five priorities present critical building blocks with which leaders and institutions can reframe and strengthen their tertiary education systems for greater impact on learning, growth, innovation, and social development.

Last Updated: Apr 09, 2024