Prof. D Mukhopadhyay
Education as the key determinant of economic growth has been well acknowledged by the contemporary civilized world. Contribution of education and more specifically quality of education is the causal factor that demarcates quality of living between two or more countries. The World Economic Forum (WEF) 2016 defines education as ‘the stock of skills, competencies and other productivity enhancing characteristics. Education is considered to be a critical constituent of human capital which empowers an individual with efficiency and efficiency contributes to productivity and end outcome is the economic growth measured in terms quality of living and Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is the objective measurement of economic growth of a country. According to the WEF, productivity is the function of quality education which increasesability of the workforce, facilitates transfer of knowledge about innovation and creativity and the end result is socio-economic development of a country. Education. The United Nations Millennium Development Goals impose more importance on Universal Primary Education (UPE) but the stalwarts endorse that UPE must be ‘complemented with completion of junior secondary education’. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGo) targets2030 to ensure that ‘all girls, boys complete free, equitable and quality primary and secondary education leading to relevant and effective learning outcomes. Therefore, the phrase ‘quality Education’ is the critical success factor for a country to achieve socio-economic development. At this very juncture the Indian existing education system becomes relevant for discussion. Researchers are more or less unanimous to signify India as the 3rd largest education system in the world not in terms of quality education but in terms of quantity and majority of the higher education imparting institutions produce unemployable graduates as they are not exposed through rigorous skill based training and purposeful learning. A big chunk of university graduates is devoid of synoptic, presentational, critical thinking, analytical skill and diagnostic approach to problem solving which are the essential expectations of the employers from a university pass outs. Persistent dearth of right skill sets is one of the major constraints to achieving desired growth of the Indian economy. There has been a paradigm shift from the close ended education delivery system to anopen-ended technology driven efficiency enhancing education curricula and empirical research findings are observed to have evidenced effectiveness of such education from secondary to tertiary level in the contemporary economically advanced countries such as USA, Germany, Japan, Singapore, Israel, Canada and China.
The hypothesis that the degree of economic growth of a country is the function of the evolution of its workforce, human capital, and hence on the quality of education has been proved to hold good in many cases across the world and India needs to adopt the same path as quickly as possible though NEP 2020 is aninitiative to that direction. Problem arises when India would test the degree of effectiveness of such education policy, other countries shall be far ahead of us and this problem need to be addressed. There are still many ‘ifs and buts’ in the minds of the NEP implementation agencies and NEP 2020 would see 2nd anniversary in September, 2022. The classical model of production system was based on two factors-capital and workforce and it was silent about the quality of workforce and the neo classical growth model included ‘education’ as the key factor of production as it is ‘education’ that defines the efficiency to enhancing productivity and this model of economic growth covers up the short comings of classical model. The economists added the contribution of innovation, creativity and new information in the form of technological progress to the neo classical growth model and named it ‘exogeneous growth model’ and it has been found by the researchers that economic growth and technological progress are mutually dependent and a hypothesis that the countries investing more in research and development grow quickly. This is an imperative to state that investment in research and development implies an investment education which contributes to enhancing efficiency, productivity of workforce and end result is economic growth. Exogenous growth model was silent about the determinants of the rate of technological progress. Rate of technological progress is the function of quantum of outlay on research and development and hence on quality education and this form of exogenous growth model rechristened as the ‘endogenous growth model’ contributed by Paul Michael Romer, Nobel Laureate in Economic Sciences (2018) and Robert Emerson Lucas Jr., Nobel Laureate in Economic Sciences (1995). Lucas worked further on the model developed by Romer to advocate that economic growth in the long run is ‘attributed to the accumulation of human capital’ and quality education is critical input to produce human capital. China’s eye-catching economic growth can be traced in the essence of the endogenous growth model which has fructified the Chinse economic growth within a short span of last 15 to 20 Years. Though no model is free from assumptive errors and it is cautioned that a particular model needs certain adjustments depending on sociological and political system. Quality of education is the critical determinant of economic prosperity and social development.
The World Bank and other international organizations had desired to make universal primary education to the magnitude of 100% by 2015 but the actual result is far from reality even in 2022 due to paucity of budget allocation for investment in education sector. At this point, it may be mentioned that high quality of education appears to be the enabler of economic growth in the context of endogenous growth. If growth is enabled by research and development, then the individuals at higher echelon of education hierarchy can contribute significantly to the cause of economic growth. It may not be out of place to mention that the budget allocation for research and development to whatever magnitude is committed by India produce quality human capital and it is observed that such quality human capital contributes to the economic growth of other countries through being flighted as they do not find further growth and prosperity at individual levels. This issue needs further research and consideration by the policy makers. The economic growth of a country is the function of investment to GDP ratio, quality education, gross enrolment ratio and of course political stability. Quality of education among all the determinants of economic growth is the most critical as quality of education determines the efficiency, efficiency leads to productivity, productivity leads to competitiveness of the products and services at both domestic and international markets , which essentially enhances income which leads to saving of disposable income depending on propensity to consume and this cycles ends on capital formation and the cycle starts with new investment, new projects and contributing to economic growth measured by the GDP. India is observed to have input driven production model and it hardly had any serious approach to productivity driven strategy till the economy was open to the globe during 1991-1992. Suddenly, India faced the challenges of international competitiveness during post 1991-1992 when the rest of the world is ready to enjoy the fruits of knowledge based driven production and distribution system. Knowledge driven production system needs such human capital which is the end result of quality education and delivery of quality education needs investment in research and development. Therefore, India should not simply formulate policies for skill development and capacity development of the workforce, she needs to invest in real terms in enhancing efficiency, productivity and effectiveness of the quality education in one hand preventing brain drain by providing congenial academic stimulative research environment in order to achieve the mission of self-dependence within the target fixed. The financial capital and human capital ratio need to be kept at optimum magnitude.
21st century is the era of knowledge based and technology driven economic system. Application oriented and problem-solving innovative approaches need to be incorporated in the university and professional education in order to achieve target economic growth. India should focus on delivery of quality education and it is certainly a herculean challenge before the policy makers as India is lagging significantly behand in achieving 100% literacy. Skill should be an essential component in each level of education-from primary to tertiary levels and this is expected to make them employable. For instance, secondary or post-secondary level’s skill set should be different from the skill set to be imparted at the tertiary level. The relationship between quality education and economic growth may not be linear but quality education is certainly havingimportant contributory effect in achieving economic growth and GDP is a traditional robust measure of performance of an economy. This paper aimed at analyzing effectiveness of quality education in achieving economic growth in general. In-depth research may reveal that contribution of quality secondary education is more than that of the quality post-secondary or tertiary level education or reverse depending on change exogeneous variable that impinge on the economic system. Subject to this assumption, it is concluded that education in general and quality education in particular is the critical determinant of economic growth. Therefore, both the federal government and the provincial governments should address the issues relating increase budget allocation and as a sequel to which investment in research and development in order to produce quality human capital as quality human capital is sine qua non for achieving desired economic growth faster under knowledge-based technology driven product-distribution systems. Days are not far off when daily life of every citizen shall completely be under the command and control of artificial intelligence, robotics, blockchain technology, machine learning and data analytics for which every citizen should be equipped with quality education otherwise the concerned citizen shall be compelled to have solitary life style.
(The author is an Independent Researcher and Educationist)
Follow our WhatsApp channel
