Educational attainment among young adults
South Korea crushes global competition while half the world's young adults still lack upper secondary education.
Summary
5 Most Educated Educational Systems
5 Least Educated Educational Systems
Leader
2.2%
Narrow 2.2% lead over Croatia
Gap
47%
Massive 47.6 point gap between top and bottom
Cluster
7 of 10
Europe dominates top 10 with 7 countries
Data
43 results
| 1 | South Korea | 97.8 % |
| 2 | Croatia | 95.5 % |
| 3 | Slovenia | 95.1 % |
| 4 | Poland | 94.0 % |
| 5 | Canada | 94.0 % |
| 6 | Switzerland | 93.7 % |
| 7 | Lithuania | 93.0 % |
| 8 | Czechia | 93.0 % |
| 9 | United States | 92.8 % |
| 10 | Ireland | 92.6 % |
Map
Educational attainment among young adults
Insights
Generated automatically using AILeader
2.2%
South Korea leads second-place Croatia by just 2.2 percentage points
Gap
47%
47.6 percentage point gap separates top performer from bottom performer
Cluster
7 of 10
7 of top 10 countries are European nations with 92%+ attainment rates
Outlier
#9
United States ranks only 9th despite being world's largest economy
Cluster
82-95%
Nordic countries cluster between 78-92%, below European average
Methodology
This dataset is sourced from the OECD through its official SDMX data service.
Rankdat does not alter or model the underlying values — we only clean formats, standardize country names, and reshape the data for visualization.
OECD compiles these indicators from a mix of sources including national statistical offices, international household surveys (such as Gallup World Poll, EU-SILC, ISSP), and harmonised administrative datasets.
Each indicator follows the definitions and structure specified in the OECD’s Data Structure Definition (DSD) for this dataflow.
Because indicators originate from different countries and surveys, collection years, sampling methods, and questionnaire wording may vary. OECD applies harmonisation rules to improve comparability, but differences in national methodology may still affect cross-country comparisons.
Full definitions, data collection notes, and quality documentation are available through the OECD metadata portal linked in the Sources section.