"It is important to note that no attempt is made in figure 1.3 to “adjust for quality differences” in tertiary educational experiences between countries. Of course, not every university around the globe is a Harvard, Stanford, Cambridge, or Indian Institute of Technology, so invariably considerable “skill aspects” are not included in fi gure 1.3. Such comparisons are significantly beyond the scope of this policy analysis. However, following the axiom that tertiary training is what principally enables individuals to quickly grasp new complex subjects and therefore makes it easier to train them on the (especially services-sector) job, it seems evident that in terms of describing the overall level of high-skilled workers in different countries’ workforces, any impact of quality differences among universities will be swamped by the quantitative differences in tertiary skill uptake depicted in figure 1.3.16"
I'm not at all convinced that it is axiomatic that "tertiary training is what principally enables individuals to quickly grasp new complex subjects".
can you explain why do you think the comparison is useless? the diagram shows population with "at least a college degree", so if you are suggesting that 5 year degree should be harder to get than a 3 year degree, then we should expect Russia to be behind other nations.
For perspective, the title of the study this chart came from is "The Accelerating Decline in America's High-Skilled Workforce: Implications for Immigration Policy". The authors are looking at which countries are creating lots of new high-skilled workers, and which are heading into a deficit of high-skilled workers (Germany and U.S.). In general, education systems from different countries don't map very well onto each other, but on the issue of high-skilled immigration into the U.S., the unit of comparison is "education level that U.S. companies/politicians would consider high-skilled". So, of course it's flawed and U.S.-centric -- it's a chart about U.S. immigration policy.