Education system scenarios – Analysis2010-2060 scenarios concerning the population's educational level: Main results

The level of education is the most common indicator to quantify a country's stock of human capital. Its development is particularly important in a rapidly changing world in which knowledge plays a key role in international competitiveness and in a society with a greater need for qualified personnel. At the individual level, the educational level largely determines employment prospects. Moreover, having only a compulsory school leaving diploma significantly increases the risk of job insecurity.

Several development scenarios are presented here concerning the future level of educational attainment. They take account, as fully as possible, both of internal processes related to education in Switzerland and of migration-related "flows" of human capital. Consequently, they also make it possible to obtain and present results on the future development of the educational level of the foreign population in Switzerland.

According to the reference scenario, the proportion of tertiary education graduates (institutions of higher education and higher vocational training) in the population aged 25 to 64 will rise from 35% in 2009 to 50% by 2025, and will reach almost 60% by 2045. In the "high" scenario, the 50% mark of tertiary education graduates in the population will be crossed by 2020, whereas in the "low" scenario, a maximum of 45% will be reached by 2035.

Whatever the scenario, the proportion of people without post-compulsory education will decrease significantly (from 13% in 2009 to less than 8% by 2035 in the reference scenario). Among the population of foreign nationality, the proportion of persons without post-compulsory education is expected to decrease from 28% in 2009 to less than 20% over the next 10 to 15 years.

Update: 1.7.2010

WARNING: specific results for university graduates in the population have been available since October 2011 in the publication "University scenarios 2011-2020 and university graduates in the population" (german, french), (see also main results).

Regardless of scenario is selected, the level of education of the population of Switzerland is expected to rise significantly in the coming years. In the "medium" scenario, the proportion of tertiary education graduates in the population aged 25 to 64 will rise from 35% in 2009 to 50% by 2025, reaching almost 60% by 2045. This significant increase in a "medium" scenario is not really surprising when we consider that the tertiary education graduation rate was 50% in 2007, which means that the 50% mark would be reached in 30-40 years even without any change in the graduation rate. In the "high" scenario, the 50% mark of tertiary education graduates in the population will be reached four years earlier than in the "medium" scenario, i.e. in 2021. According to this scenario, the proportion of tertiary education graduates will then rise to 60% by 2030, and then exceed two thirds of the population by 2040. In the "low" scenario, the proportion of tertiary education graduates will increase much less, reaching a top level of 46% by 2035.

Thus, the three scenarios agree that there will be a 10-20 percentage point increase in the proportion of tertiary education graduates over the next 15 years. In interpreting these high rates of tertiary level graduates it is important to keep in mind the significant contribution of high vocational training to the total number of tertiary education graduates.

Due to the gradual replacement of generations with a relatively low level of education by generations a large proportion of whom pursue post-compulsory education, the proportion of persons aged 25 to 64 not having completed post-compulsory education will decrease over almost the entire forecast period no matter which scenario is selected. In the "medium" scenario it will decline from 13% in 2009 to less than 8% by 2035. In the "high" scenario, the 5% mark will be reached by 2040, whereas in the "low" scenario the proportion of persons without post-compulsory education will drop to 10% by 2025 and would not decline again thereafter.

The development of the educational level of the population of foreign nationality is more difficult to forecast, because a large number of factors have to be taken into account: The integration of foreigners and the school success of the Swiss-educated foreign population, human capital "flows", changes in the structure of the population of foreign nationality and the impact of these changes on future generations. Due to the import of human capital, the proportion of tertiary education graduates in the population of foreign nationality has increased very significantly in recent years and reached 34% in 2009, a figure very close to that of the Swiss. In the "medium" scenario, a proportion of 50% of tertiary education graduates should be reached eventually. In the "high" scenario, the proportion of foreign tertiary education graduates will increase at a rate very close to that of the Swiss due to very high-skilled immigration and a gradual convergence of foreigners' probability of obtaining a degree with those of the Swiss. According to this scenario, the rate of foreign tertiary education graduates will reach 70% by 2040.

The main difference from the Swiss is the proportion of foreigners not having completed post-compulsory education: in 2009 this proportion was 28% among the population of foreign nationality (compared with 8% among the Swiss). Whatever the scenario, this proportion is expected to decline due to the gradual replacement of less well educated generations by better educated young people and by immigrants a smaller proportion of whom lack post-compulsory education. Depending on the scenario, this proportion should fall bellow 20% over the next 10 to 15 years. But it is only in the "high" scenario, which postulates a gradual convergence with the Swiss, that the proportion of foreigners without post-compulsory education will fall below 10%, by 2035. In the other scenarios, there will eventually remain a "base" of 12-15% of foreigners without post-compulsory education.

The developments outlined above are the result of two contributing factors: one is a component related to the import of human capital and the other is a component related to integration, that is to say, the educational process of Switzerland's foreign population. While we know that the immigrant population has a high level of education, we also note that 20% of the population of foreign nationality aged 18-24 does not have a post-compulsory school diploma (compared with 5% for Swiss citizens).

If we consider the population of foreign nationality who arrived in Switzerland before the age of 17 or who were born in Switzerland, we find that the proportion of tertiary education graduates is significantly lower than for foreigners as a whole and that it only rose by 2.9 percentage points between 2003 and 2009 (compared with 9 points for foreigners as a whole). According to the "medium" scenario, their proportion of tertiary education graduates will increase much more slowly than in the population of foreign nationality as a whole, and will eventually rise from the 17% observed in 2009 to 30% (compared with 50% for the population of foreign nationality in Switzerland as a whole). This shows that the current and future increases in the educational level of the population of foreign nationality are largely due to "exogenous" contributions and that the educational level of the Swiss-educated foreign population is increasing significantly more slowly.

It is interesting to see how the results presented here extend the 10-year scenarios for the education system and what will be, over the long term, the approximate number of students that will lead to the changes in educational levels presented above. However, for various reasons, the comparisons can only be approximate given the differences in the sources used and in the populations (the forecasts made here are for the whole of the tertiary level and are subsequently converted into results for the institutions of higher education).

The results of the "medium" scenario for 2010-2060 are very similar to the "neutral" scenario for 2010-2019 (german, french), i.e. an increase in students at higher education institutions that will slow down from about 2012. According to the "medium" scenario, in the coming decades the number of students is likely to hover between 210,000 and 230,000 students due to a lack of development in the education system and a population of 20-24-year-olds varying only slightly. Thus, according to this scenario, the proportion of tertiary graduates in the population will reach 60% (see above), with the number of students not exceeding by 15% the numbers measured at the present time.

Quite different, on the other hand, are the results obtained for the "high" B-00-2010 scenario and the "low" C-00-2010 scenario. In the former scenario, the number of students at higher education institutions will rise continuously, reaching as much as 300,000 by 2030 and more than 350,000 by 2040 as a result of a significant population growth and a sharp increase in tertiary level enrolments. In the latter scenario, the number of students will drop below the 150,000 mark over the next 35 years due to a declining population and a decrease in the number of university enrolments. Variants A-15-2010 ("medium demographic hypotheses and high education hypotheses") and A-16-2010 ("medium demographic hypotheses and low education hypotheses") indicate that the number of students at higher education institutions could, solely due to reasons related to rising or, alternatively, falling enrolments, either increase up to a maximum of 300,000 students over the next 30 years or stagnate at a level 10% below the current level.

• Detailed results
• Hypotheses and uncertainties
• Principal results of the 2010-2060 scenarios for the population development (german, french)
• Publication: Scénarios 2010-2060 pour l'évolution de la population de la Suisse (french)
• Publication: Szenarien zur Bevölkerungsentwicklung der Schweiz 2010-2060 (german)
• Publication: Scénarios 2011-2020 pour les hautes écoles et les diplômés dans la population (french)
• Publication: Szenarien 2011-2020 für die Hochschulen und die Personen mit Hochschulabschluss in der Bevölkerung (german)
  

Information
Jacques Babel, FSO, Education System Section, tel. +41 32 71 36381