I recall reading that the US holds approximately 1/4 of the world's academics (but cannot find any source to back this up). Can anyone point me to a source or provide the answer?
Could you please clarify what you mean by academics and educationalists. For me educationalists or educators would be an extremely broad term including staff working at all levels of education (from primary to higher), whereas academics would be only staff in higher education. Moreover, do you want figures in just the university sector or other types of institutions as well? The stat you mention sounds wildly inaccurate to me!!!!! (just from a common sense point of view, don't have any data to back this up im afraid)
Hi Yurgos,
The basic statistics come from:
OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development). Research and development statistics (RDS) 2014. Available from: http://www.oecd.org/innovation/inno/researchanddevelopmentstatisticsrds.htm.
Price R. The number of academics and graduate students in the world [Internet].; 2011. Available from: http://www.richardprice.io/page/4.
I am investigation 'poster presentation'. Most poster presentations are conducted at academic (higher educational) conferences & professional meetings. As OECD looks at r&d statistics (& places @ 1/4 of the global expenditure in the US. Richard Price cites http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/seind10/c0/c0s5.htm National Science Foundation figures for 2010, but I was hoping to get a more current estimate.
Your reply has made me think that R&D may be a better indicator for what I am looking to demonstrate. There are X academic institutions + X professional organisations in the US who may conduct this type of research conference. If the US is reckoned to account for @ 1/4 of the r&d expenditure, then if we multiply these research institutions/bodies by 4, then we may get a rough idea of how many similar institutions there are word-wide ....
OK - it is not accurate but it is my best guess to date - I am open to any better ideas ;-)
According to the figures from the below US census
https://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2012/tables/12s0278.pdf
Higher Education in the States includes the 2-year institutions, which would not be considered as such in europe at least; those would be more post-secondary/further education.
I don't know where/how Price came to that figure; i can't be certain he is using comparable data.
There is dissimilarity between classifications of higher education etc. Perhaps R&D is the way to go - that is where the Price info is drawn from.
I don't feel expenditure can be more accurate. For instance, 13 of the top 20 ranked HEIs worldwide are in the US, and those instirutions would have far greater budgets that the rest, so that alone would skew the results.
Here in Brazil we have the official government census which is published by INEP on the link: http://portal.inep.gov.br/.
Data on the number of teachers is available on the link:
http://portal.inep.gov.br/visualizar/-/asset_publisher/6AhJ/content/matriculas-no-ensino-superior-crescem-3-8?redirect=http%3a%2f%2fportal.inep.gov.br%2f
In 2013 the number of university teachers was 367.282 (155 219 teachers from public institutions e212.063 private institutions).
In looking to get a global figure, we get the problem that reports are not similar/available, they use different definitions & measurements etc. As such, we are reduced to 'best guess' (unless we want to commit lots of time, effort & money). The problem is that there are those who will accept your best guess as 'best available evidence' & better than nothing, & those who smugly say it is not accurate (& offer nothing better) ....
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