Higher education is an educational level that follows a completion of a school providing a secondary education, such as a high school,secondary school, or gymnasium. Tertiary education is normally taken to include undergraduate and postgraduate education, as well as vocational education and training. Colleges, universities, and institutes of technology are the main institutions that provide tertiary education (sometimes known collectively as tertiary institutions). Examples of institutions that provide post-secondary education are vocational schools, community colleges, independent colleges (e.g. institutes of technology), and universities in the United States, the institutes of technical and further education in Australia, universality colleges in Quebec, and the IEKs in Greece. They are sometimes known collectively as tertiary institutions. Completion of a tertiary education program of study generally results in the awarding of certificates, diplomas, or academic degrees.
Since World War II, developed and many developing countries have increased the participation of the age group who mostly studies higher education from the elite rate, of up to 15 per cent, to the mass rate of 16 to 50 per cent.In many developed countries, participation in higher education has continued to increase towards universal or, what Trow later called, open access, where over half of the relevant age group participate in higher education.Higher education is important to national economies, both as an industry, in its own right, and as a source of trained and educated personnel for the rest of the economy. College educated workers have commanded a measurable wage premium and are much less likely to become unemployed than less educated workers.
Higher education in some countries, including the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Ireland, specifically refers to post-secondary institutions that offer Associate's degrees, Bachelor's degrees, Master's degrees, Education Specialist (Ed.S.) degrees orDoctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) degrees, or their equivalents, and also higher professional degrees in areas such as dentistry, law, medicine, optometry, pharmacology and veterinary medicine.[citation needed]