Muslims have made big advances in educational attainment: Study

Religious groups with the lowest levels of education are also the ones that have made the biggest gains in educational attainment in recent decades, according to a Pew Research Center global demographic study that shows wide disparities in average educational levels among religious groups.

Jews are more highly educated than any other major religious group around the world, according to the study.

Muslims registered a 25-point increase, from 46% among the oldest Muslims to 72% among the youngest,” the study has found.

“Christians, Buddhists and religious “nones” have made more modest gains in basic education, but they started from a higher base. Among the oldest generation in the study, large majorities of these three religious groups received at least some formal education; among the youngest Christians, Buddhists and religious “nones,” more than nine-in-ten have received at least some schooling”

“The share of Jews with at least some schooling has remained virtually universal across generations at 99%,” it said.

The gender gap, according to the study, in higher education has flipped in several Muslim-majority countries, including Algeria, Bahrain, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, the Palestinian territories and Qatar (in the Middle East-North Africa region), as well as Iran, Indonesia and Malaysia (in the Asia-Pacific region). Indeed, in Qatar, the youngest women are more likely than the youngest men to have post-secondary degrees by 17 percentage points.