Lies, White Lies and Statistics

Lies, White Lies and Statistics

This post is a carryover from my professional life. For whatever reason, I needed to know how many university students there are in various countries. Not that much to ask, you'd think, especially in our Google era. Indeed, finding lots of fine data for the US was easy. The rest of the world: not so easy. Would you believe, for example, that no-one in Canada knows to say how many students there are in Canada? Yep. Germany isn't much better - though India isn't bad (12.8 million students in 2005. I don't know about 2006,7,8 or 2009).

As I wandered around, increasingly frustrated, someone told me about this fellow, Clifford Adelman, who recently wrote a 59-page report about my travails. Adelman, it seems, knows all about statistics, and he spent a bit of time peering at the fog of numbers thrown up by various statistical units on five continents, and came back to tell his tale.

But Let Us Straighten Out the Core Propaganda Before We Begin
An all-too-common rhetorical convention of reports and declarations
on the status of U.S. higher education is to open with a
statement that compares our participation and degree completion
rates to those of other economically advanced countries—
and always to our disfavor. It’s a way to stir up the competitive
juices: we have to be number one—or close to it—or, it is said,
our future economic life is at risk. One can cite these reports and
statements by the dozens—no, make it hundreds.
Will it surprise anyone in the house that other countries with
advanced economies utter similar statements and claim that
the United States is ahead of them in higher education? (p.14)

Those of you who are interested only in antisemitism and related cheerful matters, need not go read Adelman's report. Those seeking some light humor for their holiday readings could do worse than to have a peek.

Originally posted by Yaacov Lozowick's Ruminations