Dropping out, falling behind

Dropping out of high school has its costs around the globe, but nowhere steeper than in the United States.

Adults who don't finish high school in the U.S. earn 65 percent of what people who have high school diplomas make, according to a new report comparing industrialized nations. No other country had such a severe income gap.

Adults without a high-school diploma typically make about 80 percent of the salaries earned by high-school graduates in nations across Asia, Europe and elsewhere. Countries such as Finland, Belgium, Germany and Sweden have the smallest gaps in earnings between dropouts and graduates.

The figures come from "Education at a Glance," an annual study by the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). The report, released Tuesday, aims to help leaders see how their nations stack up.

The study also found that American and European schoolchildren are losing ground to countries such as China and India that are adapting faster to changing needs and producing more of the highly skilled workers the 21st century demands.

That comparison will be crucial in the coming decades.

The number of college graduates from China last year — 4.4 million — outstripped that of the entire European Union.

More college grads in the world have not, as some feared, created a glut. Wages for highly educated students have stayed the same or grown in all OECD nations. And as technology has advanced, job-market demands for advanced skills have, too.

The findings also underscore the cost of a persistent dropout problem in the United States. U.S. adults in their 20s and 30s have slightly lower high-school completion rates than older adults.

The report says 44 percent of adults without high-school degrees in the United States make half of the country's median income or less. Only Denmark had a higher proportion of dropouts with low incomes.

Also, the United States is below the international average when it comes to its employment rate among adults age 25 to 64 who have no high-school degree.

About one-third of students in the United States don't finish high school on time — or at all. Estimates on that dropout rate vary, though, and state data are often shaky.

The importance of a high-school degree on income varies across nations. It depends on the demands for skills, the supply of workers, minimum-wage laws and the strength of unions.

Some countries also show a marked contrast between high achievers and their struggling peers. More than a quarter of 15-year-olds in the United States, Italy, Mexico, Portugal and Turkey performed at or below the lowest levels on math — and students from poor families were 3.5 times more likely to do badly.

The disparity is more pronounced in the United States, partly because other nations protect people with weak education qualifications through regulations or tax systems that favor the low-skilled, said Barbara Ischinger, director of education for the OECD.

Even U.S. adult education and job training do little to close gaps, because too few dropouts take part, she said. On the other end of the spectrum, however, the United States more richly rewards those who go to college.

An adult with a university degree in the U.S. earns, on average, 72 percent more than someone with a high-school degree. That's a much bigger difference than in most countries.

The study compares the United States to 29 other nations that belong to the economic organization, although not every country reported data on every indicator.

In perspective, the U.S. economy remains strong and competitive, the report says. The country has a high proportion of educated adults and greater gender equality than other nations.

But a troubling theme of the past couple years continues: The United States is losing ground internationally because other countries are making faster and bigger gains.

The high-school and college graduation rates of recent U.S. students are now below the international average.

For example, among adults age 25 to 34, the U.S. ranks 11th among nations in the share of its population that has finished high school. It used to be first.

The United States remains, by far, the most popular place for international students to study. But there, too, the U.S. is losing its market share of students studying abroad.

When it comes to money, the nation remains a big spender.

From elementary school through college, the United States spends an average of $12,023 per student. That's higher than in all countries in the comparison except for Switzerland.