Does Education Matter?: Myths About Education and Economic Growth

By A. Wolf. 2002

630 citations recorded by the source corpus.

In the twenty-first century, education has come to be regarded as a precondition of economic success. Developed countries, having moved beyond providing basic education for all, are now spending greater sums on higher education, technical provision, vocational programs and adult training. In this book, the author questions the automatic value of any rise in the education budget. She examines the gap between the rhetoric and reality of education in Britain today, focusing on a quarter century of British government activity. The book is structured as follows: chapter one provides a brief overview of the current profile of education and of the recent changes; chapter two argues that the links between education and growth are not as direct as assumed; chapter three discusses vocational education policies and their failure; chapter four argues that business bureaucracies knew little about what the education system should provide; chapter five focuses on the issue of workplace training; chapter six examines the growth in universities and whether it can be explained by economic change and the need for higher skills; chapter seven looks at the results of this growth - an increasingly differentiated and hierarchical university sector and in financial crisis - and argues that the current expansion may actually be doing more harm than good; and the final chapter provides the conclusion. The chapters are: A truly world-beating industry: the growth of formal education; Elixir or snake oil? can education really deliver growth?' A great idea for other people's children: the decline and fall of vocational education; Does business know best? Why worry about training; The tyranny of numbers and the growth of the modern university; Pyramids and payments: the higher education market; Conclusion.

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/381e64aa3d3dfe226108e06c2b93c0a7754f159d

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

1. P. Brown
2. H. Lauder
3. R. Desjardins
4. K. Rubenson
5. P. Elias
6. K. Purcell
7. Montserrat Vilalta-Bufí
8. E. Tan

Citations in the corpus

• Determinants of human capital formation and economic growth of African countries (2006, background): “…in the micro data, but also in cross country growth equations, if the indirect effects of education on growth are taken into account (Appiah & McMahon, 2002; Barro, 1997; Carnoy, 1975; Lall, 1990; McMahon, 1984, 1987a, b, 1998, 1999; Schultz, 1961; Wolf, 2002; World Bank, 2000a; World Bank, 2001).”
• Exploring social patterns of participation in university-entrance level mathematics in England (2009, unknown): “Advanced level mathematics is a pre-requisite for most science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) courses in higher education, and has been shown to increase future earning potential (Wolf 2002).”
• Globalisation, knowledge and the myth of the magnet economy (2006, result): “This argument finds support in recent trends within higher education which suggest the emergence of a global hierarchy of ‘world class’ universities (Wolf, 2002).”
• Higher Education Funding (2004, background): “The emphasis on funding does not imply the crude fallacy, against which Wolf (2002) rightly cautions, that increased spending automatically increases economic growth.”
• Higher Education Excellence and Local Economic Development: The Case of the Entrepreneurial University of Twente (2005, background): “Alison Wolf’s statement: “the belief in education for growth runs deep and wide beyond our political classes, replacing socialism as the great secular faith of our age” (Wolf, 2002, p. 10) is probably more than a provocation.”
• Human Capital Theory (2014, background): “The real question is that is more education always good (Wolf, 2002)?”
• Is Mass Higher Education Working? Evidence from the Labour Market Experiences of Recent Graduates (2004, background): “Other critics of educational expansion at the tertiary level have suggested that the major increase in the supply of graduates could be indicative of a growth in credentialism rather than the development and enhancement of human capital (Brown, 2003; Wolf, 2003; Ainley, 1997; Keep and Mayhew, 1999).”
• Education, migration, and job satisfaction: The regional returns of human capital in the EU. Bruges European Economic Research (BEER) Papers 1/November 2004 (2004, background): “The question about which human variables are relevant for growth has thus come to the fore (Wolf, 2002).”
• An Analysis of Skill Mismatch Using Direct Measures of Skills (2011, background): “…human capital theory, especially viewed within an endogenous growth framework provides a very powerful and appealing rationale for the economic value of education, as Alison Wolf (2003) has pointed out, unquestioned faith in education and human capital theory by policy makers should be avoided.”