Wedaneus

Look at Ankara, Turkey. Proud of my birthplace !

Indeed compared to the illiteracy of the whole country, Ankara stands out!

The PIIGS are fairly educated.

GER sort of surprising no?? thought more would be blue (tertiary, like Sweden, Norway, France, UK)

but GER does have a very very large population by EUR standards.. so that matters for averages.. also have a lot of highly trained technical workers that don't attend regular university..

Exactly that. Germany has a very sophisticated & broad technical school/skills program. The German system is actually extremely smart. Instead of sending ppl to uni to get degrees that will be useless, the Germans send ppl to learn skills that actually help ppl and the economy.

Yep. Have heard Swiss also very good at spending education $ wisely - getting people on right track to develop skillset useful in economy, as opposed to useless degrees. Scandinavians also fairly good at vocational training +retraining. Wish we did more of this in US.

Greece + Portugal + Baltics all impressive (considering *relative* lack of wealth) - relative to very rich parts of Western EUR. obv they're all wealthy by global standards.

You have to understand geography plays a role in my view. If Austria, Norway, or Switzerland, were located where Greece is geographically.... they wouldn't be Austria, Norway, or Switzerland.