This has been done, but it is unsatisfactory because in a cross-country comparison many other things vary along with political institutions: it is impossible to isolate the effect of political arrangements on happiness.

ECONOMIST: Happiness is a warm vote

For sake of comparison, the United States has roughly 4, 200 accredited higher education institutions today.

FORBES: How To Build 50,000 New Colleges

"I also found that no thorough comparison of data from controlled archive cases was undertaken with other government departments or financial institutions in order to trace applicants until April 2012, " he said.

BBC: UKBA attacked over 'inaccurate' data given to MPs