Education and Economic Development

Education and Economic Development

111 Payne Hall

Tuesday and Thursday 1 – 2:25 PM

Human and Organizational Development

HOD 2430-1

Spring Semester, 2010

Stephen P. Heyneman

Professor

International Education Policy

Department of Leadership and Organizations

Box 514 Peabody Campus

Payne 205 B

Nashville, Tennessee 37203

Tel: 615 322 – 1169

Cell: 615 406 – 0287

Email:

Office hours: by appointment

Teaching assistants:

Jonathan Stern, Department of Leadership, Policy and Organizations

Jeongwoo Lee, Department of Leadership, Policy and Organizations

Background

For fifty years the predominant language of development has been that of economics and economic policy. Within that, one important emphasis has been on the degree to which human capital has been able to contribute to individual productivity and national growth, to occupational mobility and the equality of income.

However, the theories on which human capital assumptions are based have evolved over time, and have been the subject of controversy. This course will survey a range of those issues, keeping in mind the tradeoff in understanding between breadth and depth.

The course will cover different methods to answer questions of how much a society should invest in education. It will cover the debates over one versus another method and the views about whether these methods tended to “distort” investment policies and strategies. The economics of basic and higher education will be included, as well as costs, finance, and internal efficiency. Policies and experiments in education reform will be examined throughout the semester. At the end of the course there will be a discussion of the shift from human capital models to models of social capital, and what this implies for the future.

Designed as a survey of issues, students will become familiar with the different views over investing in education, the methods to evaluate the effectiveness of those investments, and the analytic trends within international agencies and national governments when education investments are rationalized.

Class Methodology

Classes will combine lecture, discussion and group presentations. Students are expected to contribute to class discussions by sharing their understanding of the readings, and by responding to questions set for debate. Students will take the lead in many classes by framing the discussion of readings or presenting cases for discussion. Students will learn how to use household survey data to evaluate the benefits and costs of education and to inform the policy debate.

All readings for the course will be posted electronically through Blackboard.

Undergraduate Requirements

Student Assessment % of Final Grade

Midterm examination 30

Final examination 30

Group paper/presentation 30

Classroom participation 10

The midterm will be given on March 4th and will cover the first half of the course.

The final exam will be due on our scheduled final exam date in May and will cover the second half of the course.

Class attendance is required. Recognition will be given for those whose class participation is excellent.

Paper/presentation

On the first day after the class roll is final, the class will be divided into topic groups. Each group will be assigned a topic and a date for presentation of that topic. The group is expected to (i) research the issue, (ii) prepare a one-paragraph abstract of the research, (iii) prepare a bibliography that includes all of the sources used in the research, and (iv) make a presentation to the class on the date specified. The presentation should be no longer than 20 minutes.

Members of the group are expected to contribute equally to this assignment. However, each will be asked to make a contribution in terms of research, editing, graphics and oral presentation. Students who try to free ride on the work of a teammate will receive a lower grade than other team members. Presentations should not be confined to the United States, but should draw on international experience.

Honor Code

We support the Undergraduate and the Graduate Honor Codes. Students are expected to do their own work on all assignments. Any evidence of cheating on exams, the paper, or other assignments will be reported to the Honor Council. Cheating includes but is not limited to copying the exams or assignments of other students, plagiarism, and having others write your paper for you. You may work with persons in your group on your group assignments. You may not receive help from former students or other persons in the class on these assignments.

Syllabus Summary

Tuesday Thursday

Session 1 January 13th

Introduction

Sessions 2/3 January 19th January 21st.

Human Capital Human Capital

Sessions 4/5 January 26th January 28th.

Gender Equity (?) Education Finance

Sessions 6/7 February 2nd. February 4th.

Education Finance Poverty and Learning

Sessions 8/9 February 9th. February 11th.

When Models become Monopolies: Education Policy and the World Bank

Sessions 10/11 February 16th. February 18th.

Ed. and Social Cohesion Ed. and Corruption

Sessions 12/13 February 23rd. February 25th.

Ed. and Foreign Aid International Trade in Ed.

Sessions 14/15 March 2nd. March 4th.

Film Being Damaris Midterm

Sessions 16/17 March 16th. March 17th.

Higher Ed. Competition Ed. Role of Government

Session 18/19 March 23rd. March 25th.

Ed. in the former USSR Obama’s Ed. Policies

Session 20/21 March 30th. April 1st.

Topic 1: Voc vs. academic Ed. Topic 2: Merit or Need-based Aid

Session 22/23 April 6th. April 8th.

Topic: 3: school choice? Topic 4: Mother tongue instruction?

Session 24/25 April 13th. April 15th.

Topic 5: Should schools teach nationalism? Topic 6: International students= brain drain?

Session 26/27 April 20th. April 22nd.

Topic 7: Does Money Matter? Topic 8: Ed. Investments.: 4 year olds or 18 year olds?

Session 28 April 27th.

Course summary

Syllabus

Session 1: Thursday, January 14

Course Introduction

Session 2: Tuesday, January 19th and Session 3 Thursday, January 21st.

Human Capital

Required Reading

Psacharopoulos, George and Woodhall, Maureen.1985. Education for development: An analysis of investment choices. New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 72-104; 166-184.

Solomon, L.C. 1987. The range of educational benefits. In, Economics of education research and studies, ed. George Psacharopoulos, 83-93. London: Pergamon Press.

Schultz, Theodore W. 1971. Investment in human capital. In Education and the economics of human capital, ed. Ronald Wykstra, 23-41. New York: The Free Press.

Recommended Reading

Duflo, Esther. 2006. Poor but rational? In Understanding poverty, ed. Abhijit V. Banerjee, Roland Bénabou, and Dilip Mookherjee, 367-379. New York: Oxford University Press.

Psacharopoulos, George. 2004. Returns to investment in education: A further update. Education Economics 12: 111-124.

Rosenzweig, Mark R. 1996. When investing in education matters and when it does not. Challenge March/April: 22-29.

Becker, Gary S. 1993. Human capital: A theoretical and empirical analysis, Third Edition. Chicago,IL: University of Chicago Press. [Parts I and II]

Schultz, Theodore W. 1979. Autobiography.

http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economics/laureates/1979/schultz-autobio.html.

Schultz, Theodore W. 1979. Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech.

http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economics/laureates/1979/schultz-lecture.html.

Alkire, Sabina. 2002. Valuing freedoms: Sen’s capabilities approach and poverty reduction Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

Sen, Amartya. 1999. Development as freedom. New York: Anchor Books.

Vollman, William T. 2007. Poor people. New York: Harper-Collins Publishers. [selected case studies]

Hanushek, Eric and Ludger Woessmann. 2007. The role of education quality for economic growth. World Bank Policy Research Working Paper #4122. Washington, DC: The World Bank.

World Bank. 1993. The East Asian miracle. Washington, DC: The World Bank. (pp.43-69)

Krugman, Paul. 1994. The myth of Asia’s miracle. Foreign Affairs 73: 62-77.

Oketch, Moses O. 2006. Determinants of human capital formation and economic growth of African countries. Economics of Education Review 25(5): 554-564.

Pritchett, Lant. 2006. Does learning to add up add up? The returns to schooling in aggregate data. In, The handbook of the economics of education, ed. Erik Hanushek and Finis Welch, 635-692. Amsterdam: Elsevier.

Wang, Yan and Yudong Yao. 2001. Sources of China’s economic growth, 1952-1999: Incorporating human capital accumulation. Washington, DC: The World Bank.

Session 4: Tuesday January 26th. Gender Equity

(Kathryn Anderson)

Required Reading:

Alderman, Harold and Elizabeth M. King. 1998. Gender differences in parental investment in education. Structural Change and Economic Dynamics 9(4): 453-468.

Schultz, T. Paul. 1998. Returns to women’s education. In Women’s education in developing countries: Barriers, benefits, and policies, ed. Elizabeth M. King and M. Anne Hill, 51-93. Washington, DC: The World Bank. [You may find the chapters on education by region interesting.]

Schultz, T. Paul. 2002. Why governments should invest more to educate girls. World Development 30(2): 207-225.

World Bank. 2001. Engendering development. A World Bank policy research report. New York, N.Y.: Oxford University Press. (pp.73-107 and 147-180)

Recommended Reading

Bowen, Donna Lee. 2004. Islamic law and the position of women. In Islam and Social Policy, ed. Stephen P. Heyneman, 44-117. Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press.

Dougherty, Christopher. 2005. Why are the returns to schooling higher for women than for men? Journal of Human Resources 40(4): 969-988. [Excellent summary of the literature on returns in the US.]

Jacob, Brian A. 2002. Where the boys aren’t: Non-cognitive skills, returns to school, and the gender gap in higher education. National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) Working Paper #8964. Cambridge, MA: NBER.

Wils, Annababette and Anne Goujon. 1998. Diffusion of education in six world regions 1960-1990. Population and Development Review 24: 357-368.

Session 5: Thursday, January 28 and Session 6: Tuesday, February 2nd.

Education Finance

Required reading

Benson, Charles S. 1978. The economics of education. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, pp. 261-291 and 331-373.

Psacharopoulos, George and Woodhall, Maureen.1985. Education for development: An analysis of investment choices. New York: Oxford University Press, (Chapter on education finance pp.128-165).