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Higher education is never free - the question is: who should pay for it? Current policy debates in Europe are increasingly focusing on raising the share of private funding. To date, policy discussions have centred on a relatively small number of alternatives, namely full public funding, tuition fees, either up-front or delayed and income-contingent, or a surtax on graduate incomes. Here, I present an alternative that, to my knowledge, has not been suggested previously, but sidesteps some important objections against other forms of private contributions. The basic idea explored here is to increase the statutory retirement age for higher education graduates relative to non-graduates. In principle, the resulting decrease in future public pension liabilities can be converted into increased funds for present spending on higher education. In this first discussion of the above proposal I consider important caveats, perform an order-of-magnitude estimate of financial feasibility, i.e. whether deferred graduate retirement (DGR) could potentially raise sufficient funds to replace tuition fees, and discuss advantages and disadvantages compared to more established policy options. I conclude that, at least in the European context, DGR is potentially feasible both financially and politically, has a number of desirable properties compared to the alternatives, and deserves more serious investigation.

The age pattern of school entry reflects a complex social and empirical reality that is inadequately captured by a single number. Recognising these complexities in national and international research and policy discourse raises important but neglected questions around the identification of vulnerable groups, the relative value of pre-primary and primary education, as well as the normative powers and responsibilities of governments vis-à-vis parents, and the international educational community vis-à-vis both. This is illustrated by the example of Indonesia, where the official age norm for primary school entry is widely disregarded in practice, with a majority of children starting school one or even two years earlier. Crucially, it is the compliant children entering at the statutory age who tend to be from more disadvantaged households, and enjoy no benefit in educational outcomes from their greater maturity.

Estimating school completion is crucial for monitoring Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 4 on education. The recently introduced SDG indicator 4.1.2, defined as the percentage of children aged 3–5 years above the expected completion age of a given level of education that have completed the respective level, differs from enrolment indicators in that it relies primarily on household surveys. This introduces a number of challenges including gaps between survey waves, conflicting estimates, age misreporting and delayed completion. We introduce the Adjusted Bayesian Completion Rates (ABCR) model to address these challenges and produce the first complete and consistent time series for SDG indicator 4.1.2, by school level and sex, for 164 countries. Validation exercises indicate that the model appears well-calibrated and offers a meaningful improvement over simpler approaches in predictive performance. The ABCR model is now used by the United Nations to monitor completion rates for all countries with available survey data.

The significant improvement in school access (particularly at the primary level) is one success story of the Education for All (EFA) movement and the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). However, many already marginalised children were left further behind during the global mass enrolment drive of the 1990s and early 2000s, and today half of the world's children without basic skills in literacy or numeracy are actually in school, according to recent data from UNESCO (Rose, 2015). With the launch of the Incheon Declaration for Education 2030 in May 2015 and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) later that year came a noticeable shift in the discourse, from an almost exclusive focus on expanding access to formal schooling to the improvement of the quality of education, specifically through the improvement of student learning outcomes. SDG 4 includes targets and corresponding indicators for basic literacy and numeracy achievement (Targets 4.1 and 4.6), for 'relevant skills … for employment, decent jobs and entrepreneurship' (Target 4.4), and, finally, for 'the knowledge and skills needed to promote sustainable development' (Target 4.7). This emphasis on improving quality by improving learning outcomes has ignited an interest in teachers and teaching and, subsequently, has put teachers in a position of greater prominence on the SDG agenda in the form of a dedicated 'means of implementation' in Target 4.c: 'By 2030, substantially increase the supply of qualified teachers, including through international cooperation for teacher training in developing countries, especially least developed countries and small island developing States' (UNGA, 2015b). While some might view it as a promising development that teachers are included in the SDGs, in this chapter, we argue that how teachers are included in the agenda is a cause for concern for educationists and for the international community as a whole.

In summer 2007, the US subprime crisis emerged and economic growth in industrialised countries started to slow down. The situation deteriorated after the default of Lehman Brothers in September 2008 and despite massive government interventions, the United States and most European countries slid into recession. We investigate the influence of the recent economic and financial crisis on European labour market perspectives and educational attainment decisions. Furthermore we disentangle the differential impacts of the crisis on various demographic subgroups. We find that young male workers have been hit hardest, while older workers and women have been partially protected by non-redeemable contracts and the fact that they work in sectors which have been less severely hit by the crisis. Focusing on the education sector, it seems that the demand for education increases because individuals try to circumvent the tight labour market, while the supply of education suffers because of the increased pressures on federal budgets in most European countries. However, we conclude that it is too early to make a definite statement because the full impact of the crisis on the education sector is still to come.

La fréquentation scolaire dépend de l'âge. La composition par âge de la population, par un pur effet de structure, influe sur la valeur des indices agrégés de présence dans le système scolaire tels que les ratios de scolarisation. Ce phénomène n'est généralement pas reconnu et a fortiori pris en compte dans les statistiques scolaires. Au mieux, la question de la structure par âge est simplement considérée comme une source d'erreur de mesure quand on compare des données administratives avec des données d'enquête. En recourant à une technique de standardisation des structures par âge, les auteurs montrent comment cet outil très courant en démographie peut facilement être appliqué aux indicateurs de scolarisation, et comment cela affecte les résultats. Ils observent que l'impact sur les ratios nets et bruts de scolarisation est généralement modéré ; mais quand on compare des contextes différents en termes de croissance des effectifs des générations successives ou de fréquentation scolaire, ne pas tenir compte des structures par âge pourrait biaiser les conclusions.

"The Role of Education in Enabling the Sustainable Development Agenda explores the relationship between education and other key sectors of development in the context of the new global Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) agenda. While it is widely understood that there is a positive relationship between education and other dimensions of development, and populations around the world show a clear desire for more and better education, education remains an under-financed and under-prioritised sector within development. When education does make it onto the agenda, investment is usually diverted towards increasing access to formal schooling, without focusing on the intrinsic value of education as a tool for development within the international development community more broadly.The authors explore these tensions through a review of literature from a range of disciplines, providing a clearer picture of the relationship between education and other development sectors. The book challenges silo-thinking in the SDGs by exploring how achieving the SDG education targets can be expected to support or hinder progress towards other targets, and vice-versa. Drawing on examples from both low and high income countries, the book demonstrates how 'good' education functions as an 'enabling right', impacting positively on many other areas. The book's scope ranges across education and development studies, economics, geography, sociology and environmental studies, and will be of interest to any researchers and students with an interest in education and the SDGs. "--Provided by publisher.