Your assumption is totally false. I'm Russian and I can tell you that more than 80% of Russian pupils join universities (or a college) after 11 years of school. Standard university education program lasts for 5 years, after that you can join "aspirantura" (a post-gradute form of education) for another 4 years and only then you can earn some science degree. Doctor of Science is the highest degree which is usually earned at age of 50. On the opposite, the US's "phD" can be compared to the lowest possible degree here (no one will call/treat you as a scientist if you under 30). Russian academic system is very different from what you have in US or in EU. I believe same applies to Brazil and Argentina and many other post-soviet countries which blindly copied everything from Soviet Union system. So, it's very inaccurate to compare education level of countries that way as on the pic since there's still no unified standard adopted by them.

From my personal perceptions, I admit that more and more ppl here in Russia tend to get higher degrees, hence require higher sallaries. This causes a great problem in society - no one wants to clean streets and work on plants, everybody want to be bankers or at least some financial/oil tycoons. And programming/CS is considered as "street cleaning". :-(

PS: The only seemingly correct assumption that can be made based on the pic is that China, Brazil and India will stay the best "outsource dirty work to" countries at least for the next decade :-).

Assumption? Sorry, I wasn't aware I made any any assumptions that weren't implicit in the graph.

In the U.S. a student will attend a 4-year program after 12 years of school, meaning 16 years of schooling for a "tertiary" degree. That sounds equivalent in time to a Russian education through the standard university program. The higher degree programs here and in Russia are not relevant to the graph, so the fact that a U.S. PhD can be attained before the age of 30 versus Russia's 50 doesn't actually skew anything or explain why the 35-44 bracket in Russia is higher than the 25-34 bracket (though both are higher than any other country on the chart).

Anyway, the original blog entry is here: http://blogs.ft.com/crookblog/2008/03/the-dumbing-of-america...

The point of the study was to look at the decline of the skilled workforce in the U.S., and in light of this, the foolishness of policies that keep out foreign skilled workers. So the main question the chart addresses is, "Where can we find people with the equivalent of a U.S. college degree?" And the answer that you and the study have both given is that Russia, Canada, Japan and South Korea have educated workers to spare -- and U.S. politicians should make it easy for them to immigrate here, since we're not generating enough of our own.

At this point, I should point out that Einstein published his work on special relativity at the age of 26. If it takes 50 years to earn a Doctor of science, the education system is chocking itself. By that age, scientists are too set in their ways to think up anything new (with rare exceptions).

Do you know that Einstain was recognized as crazy fag in his 20th and it took him next 20 years to improve his theory and make it real science before he was nominated as genious.

I strictly believe that one has to produce ALOT of theoretical AND practical knowledge before being recognized as scientist, which is not the US case. In US you write down your 100 pages thesis of nothing, partisipate in a couple of speak-about-everything-and-nothing-in-particular conferences and woah you are a scientist! The value of science is heavily and rapitly devaluating :-(.

PS: Same trend is happening here in Russia.

Saying that Einstein was "recognized as crazy fag" implies that he was actually one -- which I strongly doubt is the case. Regardless, his 1905 paper on special relativity and his subsequent work (mostly performed within the next 5 years) fleshed out the vast bulk of his theory, and it remained virtually unchanged henceforth. The 20 years you refer to is mostly the time it took for experimental physics to catch up, and be able to experimentally verify the many consequences of his theory. Also, it is somewhat immaterial how long it took for him to be "nominated as genious [sic]" -- the fact that he was indeed correct in all the major components of his theory, a theory which broke so completely with most of physics prior to him, is evidence enough of his genius (which is not to discount Lorentz or Poincare in any way, who were certainly almost there as well).

With regards to your second paragraph (and your prior comment about scientists having to be >30 to be recognized as such and >50 (!) to become one in Russia), the evidence of the works produced by great scientists in the past hundred years strongly suggests that there is something wrong with that belief. Looking only at mathematics, for example, it is difficult to argue that Ramanujan, Godel, Hilbert, Grothendieck, Weil, Weyl, or Deligne (to name only a few), were not truly scientists before age 30 (by which time most of them had published some of their best works).

If the value of science is indeed going down in the US (a fact which is not at all clear to me), then there are lots of other possible reasons for it. But certainly not age.

>ALOT

I am Russian and I can tell you that it is spelled "A LOT". Anyway, you are overgeneralizing about the US education system. It is true that in many universities one can get away with writing 100 pages of nonsense for a PhD, that is not the case in the top tier schools. The entire system is premised on rankings, i.e. top schools produce top scientists who produce top results and get the most grant money. Lower ranking schools produce the "fat tail" of PhDs who are more involved with teaching, collaborating with the industries, going corporate, etc.

In the US, the unspoken assumption is that if one really wants to be a "scientist", they can become one, virtually independent of their ability. I guess the intention is that one's efforts should be harnessed productively vs. generating frustration.

This is a non-issue. 30 year old Russian scientists do science just like anywhere else. They just aren't called a particular word ("учёный") that the 50 year olds are. It has connotations of wisdom and experience, and this is probably why.

The thing I find most surprising is that the US hasn't improved at all across the different age groups where as most other countries have. It will be interesting to see if that trend continues.