The OECD’s ‘Education at a Glance 2015’ report released on Tuesday showed that Norway’s per-student expenditures are the third highest of the 34-country bloc, behind just Luxembourg and Switzerland. 

 

The report found that Norway spends $15,500 (134,000 kroner) per student, well above the OECD average of $10,220. Norway increased its per-student spending by eight percent between 2005 and 2012.

 

Among the report’s other conclusions was that Norwegians are much more likely to stop their tertiary education at the Bachelor level than their Scandinavian neighbours. 

 

“While 19 percent of Norwegians hold a bachelor’s degree, only ten percent of them have a Master’s or equivalent, which is below the rates of all Scandinavian countries as well as the OECD average of 11 percent,” OECD’s national report on Norway read. 

 

The report also concluded that while Norwegian women tend to be more educated than their male counterparts, men continue to earn more than women. 

 

“Forty-six percent of women in Norway have attained tertiary education against only 38 percent of men. More women than men have attained a Bachelor degree (26 vs 13 percent) while an equally large proportion of men and women hold a Master or Doctoral degree,” the report read.

 

Women with tertiary educations, however, earn only 75 percent of what similarly-education Norwegian men earn, which the OECD said “can to a large part be explained by traditional career choices and a higher share of women in part-time employment”. 

 

The OECD also warned that despite Norway’s high starting salaries for teachers and its low student to teacher ratio, “the teaching profession in Norway may not be attractive enough to young graduates to replace an ageing teaching workforce”.