Undergraduate degree holders in Taiwan exceed 5 million

Taipei, March 12 (CNA) The number of people with undergraduate degrees in Taiwan topped 5 million for the first time at the end of 2015, accounting for nearly a quarter of the country's population, according to government statistics released Saturday.

As of the end of last year, the country's over-14 population was 20.3 million, 42.68 percent of whom had a college education or higher, the Ministry of the Interior (MOI) said.

Those with no higher than a senior high education accounted for 30.92 percent, and junior high school education 12.53 percent, the ministry said.

Due mainly to an increase in the number of universities in Taiwan, the number of people with undergraduate degrees rose to 5.06 million as of the end of 2015, up from 2.82 million in 2005, the MOI said.

University graduates as a percentage of population 15 years old and over, meanwhile, increased from 15.26 percent to 24.92 percent during the 10-year period, the ministry said.

The percentage of the over-14 population with graduate degrees also rose from 3.11 percent to 6.4 percent over that period, the data showed.

As of the end of 2015, Taiwan had 1.3 million people with graduate degrees, compared with 570,000 in 2005, the MOI said.

In 2014, 45 percent of the Taiwan population aged 25-64 had received higher education, compared with the average of 33 percent among member countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

Compared with OECD countries, Taiwan was behind only Canada (54 percent) and Israel (49 percent) and was close to South Korea (45 percent) and the United States (44 percent).

(By Tang Pei-chun and Y.F. Low)ENDITEM/pc