A new report from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), Education at a Glance (downloadable free), offers almost 500 pages of data comparing its 34 country members on almost every imaginable education-related statistic, from teacher pay (page 415) to student reading ability as correlated to their immigrant status (page 97).

Some of the results could be anticipated (for instance, that the previously soaring rates of study abroad slowed with the world's economic downturn, declining from an 8% increase to a 3.3% increase between 2007-8 and 2008-9). Others are more surprising. One that initially startled me and caught my attention was that field of study differs depending on where international students choose to go abroad.