Prof. D. Mukhopadhyay
Economic growth determines the future well-being of society and long-run growth in Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is primarily determined by productivity which in turn determines the skills of the work force of a nation and relevant skills can be measured by standardized tests of cognitive achievement. Researchers observed correlation between aggregate cognitive skills also known as the knowledge capital of a nation and the long-run economic growth rate. To be more specific, elevating skill-sets of workforce leads to higher growth rates.Improvements in the quality of education in the most of the European countries, USA, Japan, Canada, South Korea, Israel, Singapore have been observed to have generated magnificent magnitude of long-term benefits.The World Economic Forum (WEF)-2016 defined education as the stock of skills, competencies, and other productivity-enhancing characteristics. According toWEF (2016), education affects a country’s productivity by increasing collective ability of the workforce to carry out existing assigned tasks more quickly. Dr Robert Joseph Barro (28-09-1944-), a Harvard University Professor and Dr Jung Wha Lee (Harvard University Alumni)’s seminal work established that secondary and tertiary education are instrumental in facilitating transfer of knowledge about new information, products, and technologies created by others and enhanced boosts a country’s own capacity to create new knowledge, products, and technologies. Dr Ludger Woesman (01-07-1973-), the world’s foremost German Education Economist hypothesised that ‘education is a leading determinant of economic growth, employment, and earnings. Ignoring the economic dimension of education would endanger the prosperity of future generations, with widespread repercussions for poverty, social exclusion, and sustainability of social security systems. Researchers and educationists are of the views that individuals are able to economically empower them primarily by education and purpose of higher education is well emancipated under the doctrines of ontological and epistemological considerations.
It is well postulated by the researchers that higher education is a pivotal force behind attaining enhanced efficiency, innovation and productivity which sine qua non for rapid socio-economic development. However, when education is construed as tool for economic empowerment, it refers to such university level education that produces professionals for playing transformational role from conceptualization to implementation of the formulated policies and well framed strategies for elevation of the society from lower rung of living to higher rung of living standards and more particularly, such education system is able to produce high value generating scientists, medical practitioners engineers, accountants, economists, administrators, legal practitioners and social scientists who not only innovate new ideas and methods and methodologies but apply them into practical situations in order to derive outcomes in timebound manner . In essence, the quality education is being talked about by which the 18th Century developing economies emerged to be the economically advanced countries and they became the benchmark for global practice. There is not short-cut approach but a systematic approach to empowering people of a nation with quality education focusing on meeting the contemporary needs and in this context, India needs to make significant quantum of investment in cultivating scientific knowledge, disseminating cultivating know-how keeping in view the causal theory of implementation of the policies and strategies formulated by the innovative professionals in the respective fields of specialized knowledge . Purpose of higher education cannot be increasing Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER) quality GER.
It is pertinent to mention that enrolments in higher education have risen in promising magnitude around the world but learning levels have remained disappointingly low and many remain left behind and the simple argument in favour of this supposition is that socio-economic growth in terms of overall development through poverty reduction depends on the knowledge and skills that people acquire and, of course, not the number of years that people of nation are made sit in a classroom. The relevance of imparting quality education becomes an unquestionable doctrine in 21st Century. While emphasizing onframing education strategy, the World Bank the Member Countries to ‘investearly, invest smartly and Invest in learning for all’. The research findings substantiate that learning needs to be encouraged early not only inside butalso outside of the formal educationsystem. Adolescence is a period of ‘high potential for learning’, but many teenagers leave school at this point in order to take up employments assisting their families or the cost of education becomes a herculean hindrance in maintaining meaningful continuity in pursuing education.It may be an acceptable suggestion for policy formulators and decision makers to provide second-chance and informal learning opportunities or those who drop outs in order to ensure that all youth can acquire relevant, meaningful and significant skills to compete in in the labour market. It has been mentioned that obtaining results requires investments that prioritize and monitor learning beyond traditional metrics such as the number of teachers trained or number of students enrolled but quality needs to be the focus of education investments with learning outcomes as the key factor of quality. Resources are limited and the challenges are too big which needs to be taken care of in order to make the investment in education is effective and not simply efficient.
Achieving learning for all proposition is obviously a daunting challenge for a populous country like India but perhaps it has no substitute for the forth coming decade as quality education is a most powerful force for driving employability, productivity, good health, and economic well-being in the decades to come and this would assist in ensuring that India as a nation is elevated to the third place if not second from the ‘ fifth position in the Global Rank List-2022’ of the economically advanced nations across the world. It is mentionable that the earliest forms of written communication date back to about 3,500-3,000 BCE, education remained for centuries a very restricted phenomenon closely associated with the exercise of power and women were largely out of the bay for centuries. It was only until the Middle Ages that book production started growing and education among the general population slowly started becoming important in the Western World. It may be noteworthy while the ambition of universal literacy in Europe emerged to be a fundamental reform, it took centuries for it to be elevated to the present century. Even in early-industrialized countries, it was only in the 19th and 20th centuries that rates of literacy approached universality. Wealth of a society can increase only if the economy becomes more productive and a more productive economy can support both higher wages and higher profits, as well as shorter work weeks and a higher quality of life.
Therefore, moot question of how to increase productivity needs to be at the focus for bringing about economic development. Productivity rises with investments in infrastructure and skilled workforce and investments in education that raise educational achievement is likely to boost efficiency that leads to productivity which in turn generate sustainable GDP. Based on this argument, it may be hypothesised that investing in education contribute to the perpetual cause of well-being of nation. At this juncture, it may sound to be rationale that increase in GDP and increase economic well-being of the nation is not synonymous until there is an effort for walking towards making the society egalitarian. There are hundreds of instances as the outcomes of empirical research that Vilfredo Pareto (1848-1923)’s 80:20 Doctrine isprevalent almost every society and that ensures skewed socioe-conomic development. States should invite Foreign Direct Investments (FDIs) intertiary education sector so that access to quality education and related supports on win-win situational terms and conditions and perhaps the NEP 2020 Model may be an enabler of this functionality. What India needs is workforce equipped with cognitiveskills and expertise which is enabler of efficiency and productivity economic environment. Investment in accumulating human capital attributed with cognitive knowledge should be the basic criterion. Quality empowers the people to help themselves and in turn assists to improve transparency in governance.
It may be concluded that the cognitive skills of the population and no longer duration of schooling is the pivot for long-run economic growth. Relationship between skills and GDP growth has been proved to a robust correlation in many empirical research. The focus on human capital as a driver of economic growth for developing countries maybe the guiding principles of the policy makers. Prof.Eric Alan Hanushek (1943-2022), an MIT, Sloan Alumni and Notable Economists subscribed to the hypothesis that developing countries would find it difficult to improve their long run economic performance without improving school quality,and spending on education is a priority worldwide. Hanushek’s doctrine of quality education for economic growth is equally applicable to India and itis the need of the hour tocommit significant investment in imparting quality education with cognitive feature for bringing about economic development and the regulators are to ensure monitoring the process of cultivating and disseminating quality education to young generation today so that result may be visible in forthcoming decades.
(The author is an Educationist and Former Interim Vice Chancellor, SMVD University, J&K)
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