Suchergebnisse

Education policy is a fascinating and controversial subject.
Part of the reason is that it is an area where jurisdiction is divided.
The analysis and recommendations of professional educators are often
quite different from those of economists, and purely political factors
also playa major role, both because large amounts of public funds are
used, and because access to education appears to be an important
determinant of the distribution of income. Furthermore, as I will
discuss below, even if we confine attention to the economic analysis of
educational issues, there are different approaches with substantially
different policy conclusions. Given what is at stake, in terms of
resource use and the fundamental importance of education for the future
of a society, it is very important that we "get it right" in studying
educational issues. And for the policy-maker, "getting it right" doesn't
just mean making sure that our conclusions are consistent with the
assumptions of our models; making sure that we are using the right model
in the first place is even more important. There is, therefore, a strong
need for empirical work that would enable us to discriminate between
competing analytical approaches. Yet, as I will discuss later, education
is an area where it has proved particularly difficult to use empirical
observation for this purpose.

Emigration of educated manpower from the LDCs to the
industrialized countries has long been the subject of intense debate,
and attempts at policy intervention to affect the migration flows have
been made at both the national and international levels . At the
nationa1 level, the sending countries have tried to use devices such as
making graduates post bonds when leaving for post-graduate training in
industrialized countries, in order to put pressure on them to return
home. The receiving countries have imposed strict controls on all kinds
of immigration from the LDCs, including the immigration of educated
manpower. These restrictions have sometimes been represented as
reflecting a concern over the possibility that an excessive migration
rate might harm the sending countries, though in reality they have
probably resulted as much from pressure by domestic interest groups who
have tried to forestall competition from immigrant manpower. In the
1970s, there was also extensive discussion of the possibility of
introducing an internationally administered tax on migration, the
proceeds of which would go to the sending countries. This proposal will
be further discussed below.