Education and Development

Prepared By :
Anup Kumar Mishra
 Background

• Development refers to growth or positive

change.
• Every entity aspires to grow and develop, starting
from an individual to the entire society.
• What comes very crucial to that is acquiring
knowledge and skills to support development.
• Thus, education is a significant factor that
complements and drives development at every
level.
 Facts

• Education is an engine of growth and key to

development in every society, based on its
quality and quantity. In order to make a
significant contribution to economic growth and
development, high quality education is required.
• The twenty-first century paradigm is shifting
towards the enhancement of knowledge as a
priority.
• This has likely been a product of the resonation
of states connecting their higher educational
systems much more closely to their various
economic development strategies.
• Education is an economic good because it is not
easily obtainable and thus needs to be
apportioned.
• Economists regard education as both a consumer
and capital good, because it offers utility
(satisfaction) to a consumer and also serves as an
input to develop the human resources necessary
for economic and social transformation.
 Why is it needed?
• Education and
development are closely
linked with each other and
should reflect each other
in a changing world.
• Education in this century
needs to reflect a balance
between economic,
environmental and cultural
dimensions, and prepare
youth not only for the
workplace, but how to be
active and aware citizens
who are able to make
decisions, think critically
and care for others in their
communities.
 Paradigm Shift
• There has been a shift in international
development thinking from a main focus on
nations and economic growth to more focus
on non-economic issues and on human beings
as proper referent objects of development.
• This shift can be seen most clearly in the
introduction of the human development
agenda by the UNDP in the early 1990’s.
 Different Approaches
• Human development has been influenced by several different
approaches to development.
• The basic needs approach, the capability approach and most
recently by views about human rights and development.
• While all these approaches share the view that lives of human
beings ought to be the appropriate focus of development and
that economic growth is not enough, they differ in their views
on what else is needed in order to live a decent life.
• This in turn leads to different ideas about how the
development process should proceed, on goals of
development and ultimately thus on how success of the
development process can and should be evaluated.
 Basic needs and Human Development

• The first Human Development Report that came

out in 1990 was drafted by Mahbub ul Haq who
was a proponent of the ‘basic needs’ approach.
• The drafting committee consisted of adherents
to both the ‘basic needs’ and capability
approaches.
• The ‘basic needs’ approach has therefore formed
an integrated part of the human development
agenda from the start and many international
organisations still use the concept actively in
their work.
 The basic needs approach
• Many have argued that in order to achieve justice it is not enough
to just focus on the utility of economic growth and the
advantages this might bring to people.
• In addition it is necessary to provide minimum resources for
people to be able to function as human beings.
• Some philosophers, like Rawls, argue that the goal of a just
society must be to promote the just distribution of primary
resources, or what he calls ‘primary goods’.
• The ‘primary goods’ he argues, are goods that all rational
individuals would require in order to carry out their lives as they
plan to do.
 Focus

• The focus of the ‘basic needs’ approach is on

the basic minimum material needs of people
and the goods and services like food, shelter,
health services, education etc that people
need to live a decent life.
• The assumption is that money income and
social income give people choices to choose
the kinds of basic goods and services that will
lead to a decent life (Stewart p 9-12).
 The Capability Approach
• The capability approach was first advocated by economist
Amartya Sen and later the philosopher Martha Nussbaum has
also become a prominent advocate for the approach. In
addition to a need for a provision of minimum resources in
order for people to be able to function as human beings Sen
has proposed that human freedoms are needed as well.
• Sen introduces capability and functionings as the most suitable
criteria to evaluate how people are fairing in the development
process.
 Capabilities as Entitlements

• Nussbaum defines capabilities as entitlements

and also distinguishes between three levels/
types of capabilities: Basic capabilities, Internal
capabilities and combined capabilities in order
to map out different influences on the
functioning of a capability.
• Basic capability she explains as the innate
equipment of individuals that is necessary for
developing internal and combined
capabilities.
 Basic needs versus capabilities

• While the capability approach advocate that people should be

both beneficiaries and agents of development through
entitlements to development, the basic needs approach reduces
people in the development process to beneficiaries of
development.
• While the capability approach values the importance of freedoms
in the development process, the basic needs approach focus
mostly on resources, i.e. goods and services.
• While the capability approach advocates that the goal of
development must be to increase people’s choices, the goal of a
needs based approach will be to increase goods and services.
 Entitlement

• Entitlement refers to the set of alternative

commodity bundles that a person can command in
a society using the totality of rights and
opportunities that he or she faces.
• He can buy any such bundle, but no more than
that and the limit set by his ownership and his
exchange possibilities the two together
determining his over-all entitlement.
• On the basis of this entitlement, a person can
acquire some capabilities, i.e. the ability to do this
or that, and fail to acquire some other capabilities.
 Functioning

• functioning is an achievement of a person: what she or he

manages to do or be.
• A functioning is therefore the extent to which a person
utilizes the commodities he or she has at disposal.
• For instance, being adequately nourished (achieving a
functioning) with bread or rice (a given bundle of
commodities) depends on a range of personal and social
factors such as metabolic rates, body size, age, gender,
activity levels, climatic conditions among many others
(Clark, 2005).
• Functioning is an umbrella term for the resources and
activities and attitudes people spontaneously recognize to
be important- such as poise, knowledge, a warm
friendship, an educated mind, a good job.
 Freedoms

• Capability, in short, is effective freedom. The

concept of effective freedom is in two folds.
• According to Sen, effective freedom embodies not
only when an individual is not prevented from
achieving a particular functioning if he or she
attempt it, but more importantly, the individual
must have the resources to achieve it, and must
not be faced by other internal obstacles that make
the functioning ineligible and/or its pursuit very
costly for that person (Sen 1992; Olsaretti, 2005).
• Whereas capability reflects ˜a person ability to
achieve a given functioning .
 Education and Development

• Education is fundamental to development and

growth. The human mind makes possible all
development achievements, from health
advances and agricultural innovations to
efficient public administration and private
sector growth.
• For countries to reap these benefits fully, they
need to unleash the potential of the human
mind. And there is no better tool for doing so
than education.
 Education and Development

• Education provides a foundation for development, the

groundwork on which much of our economic and
social well being is built.
• It is the key to increasing economic efficiency and social
consistency.
• By increasing the value and efficiency of their labor, it
helps to raise the poor from poverty.
• Education is a powerful agent of change, and improves
health and livelihoods, contributes to social stability
and drives long-term economic growth.
• Education is also essential to the success of every one
of the 17 sustainable development goals.
 Is education and development the same?

• The purpose of education is preparation of an

individual for an identified job, in the not too
distant future. Nadler defines development as
learning for growth of the individual but not
related to a specific present or future job. The
main objective of development is for general
growth not related to any specific job.
 Education and Human Resources

• Most economists would probably agree that it is the human

resources of a nation, not its capital or its natural resources, that
ultimately determine the character and pace of its economic and
social development.
For example, according to the late Professor Frederick Harbison of
Princeton University:
Human resources . . . constitute the ultimate basis for the wealth
of nations. Capital and natural resources are passive factors of
production; human beings are the active agents who accumulate
capital, exploit natural resources, build social, economic and
political organizations, and carry forward national development.
Clearly, a country which is unable to develop, the skills and
knowledge of its people and to utilize them effectively in the
national economy will be unable to develop anything else.
 Explanation

• The principal institutional mechanism for developing human

skills and knowledge is the formal educational system.
• Most Third World nations have been led to believe or have
wanted to believe that the rapid quantitative expansion of
educational opportunities is the key to national
development: The more education, the more rapid the
development.
• All countries have committed themselves therefore, to the
goal of universal education in the shortest possible time.
• This quest has become a politically sensitive, but often
economically costly, sacred cow.
• Until recently, few politicians, statesmen, economists, or
educational planners inside or outside of the Third World
would have dared publicly to challenge the cult of formal
Human Development Index (HDI)
 Conclude

• The link between economic development and

eductation lies in the fact that education is a
facilitator for economic development.
• Education is a human capital investment, which is
expected to yield results that will translate to the
improvement and growth of the economy of a nation.
• This effect can be seen in areas with a high
percentage of well-educated people.
• Such people are able to channel their knowledge into
concerete actions that lead to the development of the
economy in comparison to those areas where there
are few well-educated people.