During the school year 2007-2008, 3,588 students graduated from high school and a further 3,611 at higher level education in Iceland. Statistics Iceland (Hagstofa Islands) reported that since the beginning of data collection back in 1995, there have never before been so many students graduating in just one school year.
The total number of graduates increased by 68, or by 1.9 percent from the previous year. Females made up two-thirds of all graduates, the equivalent of 66.4 percent, while males were just one-third, or 33.6 percent, which is a similar split as compared to previous years.
According to the same report, the number of students graduating with a master’s degree in one school year has never before been so high either. 735 students graduated with a master’s degree, which is an increase of 123 from the previous year, or 20.1 percent. The number of Ph.D. students was also more than in any previous year, with a total number of 23 graduating.
However, the total number of graduates attaining their first university degree was just 2,374, which is actually a 5.2 percent decrease from the previous year. The increase in the number of graduates at higher level education is due to the increase in the number of graduates with a master’s and Ph.D. degree.
Visir.is reports.
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Knowless, and others (especially Icelandic apologists), try to equate Iceland’s situation with other countries. The comparison doesn’t stand much scrutiny.
In the UK and US the problems are focussed on a few banks and their relationship with the property market. The mechanics of failure are different for the US and UK: “sub-prime” and “Alt-A” in the US – with subsequent securitisation through selling of derivatives – but “self-certification” and “buy to let” in the UK. Different banks suffered different modes of failure. The commonality is the exposure to a property bubble caused by low-cost money being recycled from countries with large positive current accounts. However, that is more of less the end of the sorry tale. The other parts of the financial system – insurance, mutual funds, the savings industry, equity markets, pension funds, foreign exchange, bond markets, capital markets, commodities, shipping brokerage, export credit markets, derivatives, forwards-and-futures, and gold – are all functioning without any state intervention. The UK and US governments are nowhere near any fiscal limits where bond buyers would be worried. This is not to say any of those parts of the system are not under stress or showing losses – of course they are – but that is normal in business: profits do not roll on relentlessly. Equally, the real economy in both countries continues to function normally with one exception: the US car industry.
The Icelandic financial system has totally crashed with one exception – the pension funds. They wisely resisted all attempts to get them to join the national bailout last October. (It is one of those mysteries to me that Icelanders always talk about pensions purely as an asset. They are also a liability since they are committed to make future payments from that asset base. I’m always bemused by this “pensions are household assets” line – no they’re not, they’re not freely available savings.)But everything else in Iceland is totally shot to pieces. The banks are being pawned off to the creditors as I write. Capital markets are totally closed. Government finances cannot operate without IMF backing: the expenditure side is totally out of sync with the income. Corporate debts remain crippling. Personal indebtedness is gigantic and widespread (Icelanders make the average Brit and Yank look positively prudent) – debt repayments in a large number of cases are unsustainable with plenty of defaults in the pipeline. Inflation is rampant. Interest rates are crazily high trying to protect the unprotectable: a failed currency. Unemployment is being kept artifically low but will rise significantly as the government cuts back on its expenditure. The current account deficit continues to be massively in the red – way beyond anything that can be maintained, with huge losses in foreign reserves occuring on a daily basis. And those losses come from mainting the interest payments of the ISK-denominated bonds, many of which are maturing and remain unredeemed. It is those bonds that would wipe out the currency if it wasn’t held in a protective (but expensive) bubble.
Here is an analogy. The US and UK economies are ships which were badly holed. They took on an enormous amount of water. But the leaks have been stopped and the pumps are working (slowly). The ships are moving very slowly, and certainly if a storm were to brew up there might be some dangerous moments ahead. The Icelandic economy? It has sunk without trace. The population are currently in lifeboats. The IMF is busy building them a new ship (much smaller than their old one) and coming to their rescue. For some strange reason the population is rowing away from its rescuers!
“gives some figures for Icelands external debt which claims that it was about 5x gdp before crisis.”
I’ve never seen such a low figure for Iceland before. However, the higher figures were x PRODUCTIVE GDP, I assume that means excluding banking and services which were over 50% of Icelands GDP.
Peter -London said:
“Err, no. Iceland total debt was something like 12x GDP. UK was more like 4.5x GDP and a large amount of the debt was in GDP I believe. Ireland is similar to the UK’s debt level, but more skewed towards property debt”
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The UK external debt use to be 4x GDP before oct 2008
Factor in GOV debt since/bank bailouts/printing money/ devaluation and subs increase increase in value of external debt.
Prior to oct 2008, Irelands external debt was 10x GDP
Now factor in bank bail out, a total Eur 80bn in a crashed economy.
http://www.island.is/media/frettir/51.pdf
gives some figures for Icelands external debt which claims that it was about 5x gdp before crisis.
Point is, that the crash in the UK and Ireland was preceded by years of cheerleading from educated economic morons. The crash is a product of a fundamentally flawed economic belief system that put faith in a free for all money supply, property/ consumer boom/ debt boom.
Not just the actions of a few rogue banks in the UK.
KNOW-LESS:
“In my uneducated economic opinion the Iceland economy, despite it’s fragility and excess borrowing (reflected also in trade balance) would be in no worse situation than the UK or Ireland, if you took this Icesave debacle out of the equation.”
FROM A VERY STRICTLY ECONOMICAL POINT OF VIEW, AND OF COURSE APART OF THE ICESAVE ISSUE, ICELANDIC ECONOMY IS CLOSER TO POST-COMMUNIST EASTERN EUROPEAN COUNTRY ECONOMY THAN TO ANY HIGLY DEVELOPED ECONOMY OF WESTERN EUROPE THAT IS VANGUARD IN TECHNOLOGIC DEVELOPMENT.
EVEN MANY EASTERN EUROPEAN ECONOMIES ARE BETTER OFF THAN ICELAND JUST BECAUSE THEY ARE IMPROVING IN THE IMPLEMENTATION AND DEVELOPMENT OF LAST TECHNOLOGY INDUSTRY.
ICELAND STILL DEPENDS ON FISH AND RAW ALUMINIUM, MOST OF IT UNPROCESSED, OR DERIVED TO SECONDARY TECHNOLOGIC FINE PROCESSED PRODUCTS, AND SUCH ECONOMY, FROM THE ECONOMIC POINT OF VIEW, IS A III WORLD CLASS ECONOMY. EVEN COUNTRIES LIKE CHINA OR INDIA, OR MANY EATERN EUROPEAN COUNTRIES ARE MORE ADVANCED THAN ICELAND IN MANY ASPECTS.
NOW, IF ICELAND DOES NOT REALIZE THIS, YOU WILL BE LEFT BEHIND OF TECHNOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENT…
KEEP GOING ON WITH YOUR SPEECHES ABOUT FISH, YOU DON´T EVEN HAVE A TRAIN SERVICE IN THIS COUNTRY, HOW BAD IS THAT, WHEN EVEN THE POOREST COUNTRIES IN THE WORLD HAVE TRAINS, AND BETTER TRANSPORTS THAN YOU HAVE IN THIS ICED ROCK.
ICELANDERS EDUCATION IS ONE OF THE WORST IN THE WORLD, THE ONLY PEOPLE WHO REALLY HAVE A GOOD EDUCATION IN ICELAND IS BECAUSE THEY HAVE STUDIED ABROAD. EVERYONE KNOWS THAT HERE. ICELANDIC UNIVERSITIES ARE NOT EVEN IN THE LIST OF THE BEST 100 EUROPEAN UNIVERSITIES.
I HAVE STUDIED PART OF MY PH.D. IN ICELAND AND I HAVE TO SAY THAT EDUCATIONAL LEVEL HERE IS FAR BELOW THE MEDIA OF OTHER EUROPEAN COUNTRIES.
NOW IN ICELAND THEY HAVE TRIED TO OFFER SO MANY MASTER DEGREES IN MANY AREAS, SADLY MOST OF THE PEOPLE TEACHING THERE BARELY HOLDS A MASTERS DEGREE. I EVEN COMPLAINED AT ONE COURSE THAT I TOOK AT THE UNIVERSITY. THE COURSE WAS A POSTGRADUATE COURSE. AND THE PERSON TEACHING PART OF THE COURSE HOLDS ONLY A BACHELLOR DEGREE OF 3 YEARS, AND SHE WAS EVEN STILL WORKING IN HER MASTERS DEGREE. HOW BAD IS THAT??? I FELT TOTALLY BETRAYED, BECAUSE THAT PERSON HAD NOT IDEA OF WHAT SHE WAS TALKING ABOUT, HER KNOWLEDGE WAS OBSOLETE AND OUT OF TIME. AND THE THEORIES SHE WAS USING TO GROUND WHAT SHE WAS SAYING… JUST OLD CRAP…
IF YOU ONLY KNEW HOW CRAPPY UNIVERSITY EDUCATION IS IN ICELAND. IN MOST OF THE THINGS. YOU CAN MAYBE GET AN ACCEPTABLE EDUCATION AT BA LEVEL, IN THE MAIN FIELDS. BUT IF YOU WANT TO SPECIALIZE IN SOMETHING, YOU BETTER GO ABROAD BECAUSE WHAT THEY HAVE HERE IS A REAL CIRCUS. HAVING A MASTERS DEGREE FROM ICELAND AND NONE IS JUST THE SAME. NO WONDER WHY I HAVE CHOOSEN TO COMPLETE MOST OF MY POSTGRADUATE STUDIES THROUGH DISTANCE EDUCATION WITH UNIVERSITIES OF PRESTIGE IN EUROPE. I WAS REALLY TIRED OF HAVING TO DEAL WITH VERY PREPOTENT AND STUPID PEOPLE WHO THOUGHT THEY KNEW EVERYTHING. MOST OF THEM BEING JUST PEOPLE WHO FINISHED THEIR DEGREES DECADES AGO AND HAVE NOT RECYCLED AT ALL. AND ONLY A FEW OF THEM HAVING STUDIED ABROAD.
UNIVERSITY EDUCATION IN ICELAND REALLY SUCKS!!! AND, LISTEN, I HOLD TWO MASTERS DEGREES FROM TWO DIFFERENT COUNTRIES AND I AM WORKING ON MY PH.D. NOW, SO I GUESS MY OPINION IS OF SOME REAL VALUE… IN ADDITION TO THAT I HAVE BEEN TEACHING IN ICELAND FOR MANY YEARS, AND THE GENERAL ATTITUDE OF ICELANDERS IS THAT A FOREIGNER CANNOT TEACH THEM ANYTHING, BECAUSE THEY KNOW EVERYTHING. THAT IS THE GENERAL BEHAVIOR OF THE ICELANDERS. AND IT SUCKS TOO, TO SEE SUCH A RETROGRADE AND CLOSE MINDED PEOPLE WHO THINK THEY ARE AT THE TOP OF THE WORLD. NOW THEY HAVE TO FACE THEIR REALITY: THEY ARE TECHNOLOGICALLY AND ECONOMICALLY UNDEVELOPED, HEAVILY IN DEBT, AND BANKRUPT, STILL… THEY HAVE NO MODESTY AT ALL TO ACCEPT THEY HAVE TO CHANGE, BE MORE OPEN TO LEARN FROM OTHERS…
IF THEY ARE NOT MODEST ENOUGH TO LEARN FROM OTHERS, THEY WILL JUST KEEP IN THEIR IGNORANCE…
“In my uneducated economic opinion the Iceland economy, despite it’s fragility and excess borrowing (reflected also in trade balance) would be in no worse situation than the UK or Ireland, if you took this Icesave debacle out of the equation.”
Err, no. Iceland total debt was something like 12x GDP. UK was more like 4.5x GDP and a large amount of the debt was in GDP I believe. Ireland is similar to the UK’s debt level, but more skewed towards property debt. Icesave is an very small part of the debt, Icelands debt problem is beyond anything seen by other defaulting or crashing economies in previous historic crashes.
There is an Icelandic document, a link was posted on Icenews, that detailed the truly shocking extremes of Iceland situation (I can’t find it right now, as I’m in London now instead of my new home in Krakow).
A question is about the quality of education contributing to the crisis.
In my uneducated economic opinion the Iceland economy, despite it’s fragility and excess borrowing (reflected also in trade balance) would be in no worse situation than the UK or Ireland, if you took this Icesave debacle out of the equation.
The external debt of both those economies is shocking in the extreme.
The path to economic destruction in the UK was not just the work of a few rogue bankers. Rather the path trodden was similar to the path trodden in Iceland and the cheerleaders of the policies of excessive money supply-property boom-debt boom, into an economy, wherever they were educated, sang from the same hymn sheet.
“only a tiny percentage of Bankers are required to wreck an economy”
true, a mix of idiotic bankers and criminally stupid and antisocial politicians can destroy any country,
the problems Britain is going trough are far from over,
this is going to get much worse, Brown is now putting Britain on fire sale, it will be interesting to see who will be buying the state property he intends to sell,
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/8301927.stm
i would not rely to much on the GBP, Brown will do what he can to ruin it,
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/article5993797.ece
“As Gordon Brown said, “British jobs for British workers”…”
Are you still believing Brown Jim ?
remember this
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vaD7GlBegG0&feature=related
Those Italians contribute nothing to the community where they work, if this would happen here the Italians would have to be really good swimmers.
interesting news
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/gallery/2009/jun/18/mps-expenses-houseofcommons
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/oct/12/guardian-gagged-from-reporting-parliament
“…and 20p tax is welcome”
So, ‘singles’ have had to pay more…. *hearing swearwords* ….and less immigrants (some of them would not find UK attractive as in the past)
Jim:
Ok, within the EU. But there are are a many non EU people working in the City
“The difference is that in the UK the best, highly educated people are chosen regardless of nationality”
Not true. In the UK, an employer can obtain a work permit for a non-EU national only if the employer can prove that no other British citizen could do their job. As Gordon Brown said, “British jobs for British workers”…
Axel said:
“If the level of education in Britain is so superior and Icelanders look like idiots compared to Brits then i wonder why the British economy looks like a train wreck”
The UK economy is in a poor condition and will take many years of tax increases and service cuts to restore it to full health. Its nothing like as bad as Iceland UK still has a working currency for instance.
The general level of UK eduction isn’t the key point, only a tiny percentage of Bankers are required to wreck an economy. The difference is that in the UK the best, highly educated people are chosen regardless of nationality whereas the most important characteristic of a Icelandic banker was his nationality.
Knowless,
I do not have a university degree in english (and it is not my maternal language too) so I am sorry, I do not understand the first 2 sentences of your comment, yet they do sound great I must say :-)
I am anxious about the outcomes of your experiment.
If the level of education in Britain is so superior and Icelanders look like idiots compared to Brits then i wonder why the British economy looks like a train wreck
i wonder what math British politicians and bankers are using, 1 + 1 = 3 may be ?, can we use that formula to decide how much money we need when we print rescue packages or inject cash into some Zombie bank that died years ago,
you have exactly the same problems we have in Iceland,
rotten politicians who have no integrity and no shame,
education system full of holes and propaganda,
a financial sector full of people who think they are superior to every one else,
media controlled by the Elite that owns the Politicians,
you can see the excact same problems in cultures similar to Iceland, like UK and USA,
the difference is only size.
Niels said:
“What you are saying is incredible”
——————-
It may well be an act of gullibility to swallow wholesale, the boastful condescending rhetoric about the practice of a successful method in which a key to it’s success calls for an opposite approach.
Regardless, I will conduct some experiments to see if Icelanders understand that multiplication takes priority over addition in the absence of parentheses, in an expression.
I agree with the comments, Icelandic University’s are just for programing the weak minds and alter the local Ego. Indeed they leave lots to desire.
Mike,
What you are saying is incredible. University graduates who never have heard about Keynes…
I am not patriottic at all about the dutch educational sysem but we studied a lot of Keynes even in secondary school and we also had to do a lot of calculations regarding his theories.
Apparently in Iceland there has been only space for ONE ideology, the ‘chicago boys ‘ of Milton Friedman, and everything outside of this ideology, embraced by people like Oddsson was just skipped from the curriculum.
If this is really true people like Oddsson have an even bigger responsibility than ‘just’ ruining the economy of their country: they have denied the children of their country a good education!
OMG it really makes me angy, this is just like communism, where people were told that ‘their way’ was the only right way and other ideologies were ignored or villified.
In my opinion denying a child a good education is a form of misstreatment and this is just that!
Mike (UK Nordic analyst) said:
Hi, I’ve returned safe and sound from being “south of the river”: an evening of heavy Germanic moralising in Mother Courage at the National. Do you guys understand that London-centric talk?
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If only they talked pwopa, one might have a chance.
Mike (UK Nordic analyst) said:
“You can search for many causes to the strange uniqueness of the Icelandic financial crash but I would include the Icelandic universities as a contributory factor (not a key one to be sure). They churned out masses of uneducated degree-bearing individuals who believed they knew it all”
————————
Looks like the UK and many other countries managed, to create their own unique serious financial crisis, aided by the contribution of their own educated ‘know it alls’.
@Mike – “Who remembers that stupid Glitnir advert from 2006 that said: 1 + 1 = 3”
If you ask your computer, it would probably think that 1 + 1 = 10 ;-)
If maths is worse taught in Iceland than it is in the UK that’s an achievement in itself. Don’t knock it.
@ Mike – thanks for the site link to the Academic Rankings
@ Jim >>Do all those women actually use their degrees by working in graduate jobs?
Many of the women that I have met, that have Icelandic University degrees, have left the country and they have been leaving long before the Kreppa hit. They leave because in many cases because there is simply not jobs to be had in their field. How many jobs do you think are in a country of 300,000 people for a person with a sociology degree?
Also, I have noticed that (in general) most women continue to read in their chosen field after graduation. The men that I know do not read anything further, with the noted exception of fields related to computer technology.
I´m just saying.
yepp, females will rule Iceland in few years..do you feel endangered?
It’s strange that there are twice as many female graduates as male graduates. Do all those women actually use their degrees by working in graduate jobs? Or do many of them graduate in sociology and then claim unemployment benefits until they get married? Just wondering…
Hi, I’ve returned safe and sound from being “south of the river”: an evening of heavy Germanic moralising in Mother Courage at the National. Do you guys understand that London-centric talk?
Icelandic education.
Well, with Gummi and others in front of us, we were fascinated. Successful financial deals rely on two things: maths and psychology. We discovered that Icelandic maths is somewhat different from the rest of the world. (For the information I have I acknowledge a brilliant British professor who worked until recently at an Icelandic university.)
Leikskoli – brilliant world-class pre-school provision.
Grunnskoli – excellent at producing “conforming-good-citizens”, but slightly weak on the academic side
Framhaldskoli – pretty bad. The studentsprof is a credit-accumulation qualification of the worst kind.
Haskoli – simply awful.
Look at the maths at framhaldskoli. This is taught in a series of separate modules: STAE103, STAE203, … STAE603 plus some extra ones and variations around the edges. Now if you get the chance go to Mal og Menning and look at the text books. On the face of it these look pretty standard. But then you look closely and see that often there is standard mathematical knowledge that is missing. It’s very odd once you see these blind spots. We checked at university level – the gaps were never addressed. So what you have is a population that generation-to-generation passes on its ignorance – because they are not even aware that they are ignorant. (This is one of the problems of having such a small society. With few specialists gaps can appear in even general knowledge.) Once you know what your counterparties don’t know then you can begin to work that to your advantage. You can make lots of money using this Icelandic mathematical ignorance. (And for that reason I won’t tell you what the gaps are!)
If you look at the degrees taught at HI they are very poor academically. In fact the degrees have never been designed nor independenty validated (at least if they have it was very poor validation). Icelandic academic staff are low-grade but surprisingly are well respected in society at large. Teaching is poor, research is worse. Student assessments undergo no independent checking. The quality of the graduates is therefore generally very poor.
You can search for many causes to the strange uniqueness of the Icelandic financial crash but I would include the Icelandic universities as a contributory factor (not a key one to be sure). They churned out masses of uneducated degree-bearing individuals who believed they knew it all. HI has some science and engineering but the majority of graduates were in the social sciences and business areas. They were brain-washed at university to believe that the “Icelandic way” was the best – I honestly believe that much of the education at the Icelandic business schools was propaganda rather than critical-reflective teaching. Certainly the young graduates we met had never heard of Keynes, never mind studied him; these students were all pure neo-classical rational-actor efficient-market-hypothesis proponents: they knew nothing else (another blind spot). Intellectually we were giants in comparison – but we never told them, because you don’t want to flaunt your superiority in financial markets. Much better to look like a fool, while making lots of money! And that’s what we did in Iceland. We latched onto the Icelandic-superiority model and played our part as the “stupid Brits”. Except we walked away from the table with lots of money every time. One Icelandic manager did notice how we seemed to win every time, and he just put it down to luck. We agreed!
Icelandic univerities? They need pulling to pieces and putting back together again using best international practice. But it won’t happen.
Good night!
WELL, AND HOW MANY ICELANDIC STUDENTS HAVE BEEN GRANTED EDUCATION IN EUROPEAN UNIVERSITIES THROUGH THE SOCRATES ERASMUS PROGRAM? PAID BY EU TAXPAYERS??
HOW MANY HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS AND TEACHERS ARE PARTICIPATING IN TRIPS AND EXCHANGE TO EU COUNTRIES, OF COURSE ALSO PAID BY THE EU TAXPAYER?
SOON ICELAND WILL BE INCLUDED IN THE PACKAGE FOR EDUCATIONAL AID PROGRAMS FOR DEVELOPING COUNTRIES…
It is not the same going to school than beeing “highly educated” and Icelanders go to school but are far from being highly educated, and even farther from beeing competitive, the same aplies when they say we are very “hard working” people, it is not the same going to work many hours and “working hard” what an Icelander does in 10 hrs. work, must forigners do in 4Hrs. It hurts to say it but Icelanders are slow, lazzy and oportunists, and this graduation stuff is probe of that, people instead if looking for jobs, they prefere to get loans and go to school(easy money)lets see who is going to lend them money now?
Mike, 100% agree with you, and examples like the one you gave, I also hjave many.
I must tell a story for you …
But before a general point: Icelandic universities do not appear in any “league tables” of the worlds top universities. The most respected list has 500 universities listed (www.arwu.org/rank/2005/ARWU2005TOP500list.htm)
and nothing Icelandic. They are rubbish institutions.
But here is my story.
Who remembers that stupid Glitnir advert from 2006 that said:
1 + 1 = 3
Icelanders often give unintended messages and that was one of them. Who is going to trust a bank that thinks one plus one is three? Not us!
Anyway, we came across a young Icelandic banker – a business graduate with a BSc from HI and an MBA from HR – who couldn’t do simple arithmetic. I am not joking. He didn’t know the “precedence of the arithmetic operators”. So he would calcuate 5 + 3*4 as 32, rather than the correct answer of 17 (you do the * first, then the +). We were astounded when we found out (all my team have PhDs in physics or maths – and revealingly none of them – except me!!! – have an MBA). When we told his boss, he wasn’t in the least bit bothered. Gummi was Icelandic, and that was more important than his ability to do simple calculations (actually his boss didn’t believe us). I won’t tell you what we did to Gummi and his boss – you wouldn’t think me a nice person! We discovered another banker with a similar problem (slightly different). All very profitable!
Whenever we walked down that long corridor at Keflavik we would see that advert and laugh and shout “Gummi! Gummi!”
I have some more general stuff to say about Icelandic education, but I must go now. See you later
As I have said before. Icelanders are educated, but it is not a very good education. I begin to wonder where in a list of accredited universities would Iceland place? Do you think it would be toward the top in “educational excellence” or toward the bottom near “able to identify cutlery”?
Furthermore, most Icelanders do not even work in the field that they did get educated: Carpenters doing web design, computer techs working as accountants, veterinarian as the minister of finance, the list is endless.
So, is the level of education even relevant if you work outside of what you studied? I think not. As in the banks, anybody that could do it was hired and education be damned.
I’m just saying.
Yeah sure , we have a lot of “well educated ” peoples, aja… and the jobs they will get in Iceland are?
Another lame propaganda to bust the local Ego