Economics of Human Resource Planning With Special Reference to Higher Education in Kerala

Ongoing changes in global economic structure along information revolution have produced an environment where knowledge and skills or education and training are considered increasingly valued commodities. This is based on the simple notion that nation’s economic progress is linked to education and training. This idea is embodied in the theory of human capital, according to which the knowledge and skill found in labour represents valuable resources for the market. Thus the important assumptions of the Human capital theory are 910 Human capital is an investment for future (2) More training and education leads to better work skills (3) Educational institutions play a central role in the development of human capital(4) the technological revolution is often cited as the most pressing reason why education and knowledge are becoming valuable economic commodities . The objectives of the present study are, the investment and institutional or structural framework of higher education in Kerala, the higher education market and the strengths and weakness of supply demand conditions , cost and the benefits of higher education in Kerala , impact of recent policy changes in higher education,need for expanding higher education market to solve the grave problem of Un employment on the basis of as systematic manpower planning and the higher education and its association with income and employment.

Essays on economics of education and inequality

El documento resume los resultados de los tres ensayos sobre economía de la educación y de igualdad de oportunidades que se realizaron para el caso de Colombia.

Joint European masters awards in construction management and construction economics : a positive step for surveying education?

The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) 5th European Conference in November 2004 focussed on enhancing collaboration at master's level in real estate education across Europe. In a context of increased global economic activity and increasing ties within the EU, there are benefits to business and to students in offering this type of educational provision. But is this paradigm true for construction economics (CE) and construction management (CM)? This paper examined the potential for collaboration and joint European awards in CM and CE. There is a political will for collaboration in HE based on economic drivers for the growth of the EU and changes are being implemented to enhance transparency and mobility for students. Professional bodies are expanding their European presence. Globalisation has resulted in greater opportunities for international real estate, and construction and there is growth in these sectors for practitioners. The difficulties with joint European collaboration are short course duration and the need to cover extensive subject matter. Other barriers are university structures, quality assurance procedures, costs and finances issues as well as IT, student services and support issues. The survey revealed that there are no RICS accredited CM / CE courses outside of the UK which inhibits collaboration. The sample was split in perceived demand for collaboration and the European focus within the courses is limited, as are field trips outside the UK. Student exchange on courses is rare. Generally there is a lag between the political will to greater student mobility and collaboration and the market, which is showing growth in multinational organisations and demand for pan European construction services and a professional body keen to deliver and support this growth. Within academia the barriers and current economic climate in HE preclude the widespread adoption of greater collaboration and development of joint awards, however this position may change.

Community-based environmental education : government and community, economics and environment

This thesis contends that government focus on policy implicitly defines community education as a means of overcoming barriers to government-initiated change, rather than as an input to governmental decision-making. The role of education is thus viewed as instrumentalist rather than as dialectical in nature. I argue that this role has been reinforced and driven by economic rationalism, as a mechanism related to scientific theory and practice. The thesis addresses the role of government in non-institutional community-based environmental education. Of interest is environmental education under the dominance of economic rationalism and as expressed in government-derived policy, in its own right, and as enacted in two government funded animal management projects. The main body of data, then, includes a review of some contemporary environmental policies and two case studies of 'policy in practice'. Chapter One provides an overview of environmentalism as it has emerged as part of the discourse of Western political systems. Recognised as part of this change is a move to environmentalism embued with the rhetoric of economic theory. The manifestation of this change can be seen in an emphasis on management for the natural environment's use as a resource for humans. Education under this arrangement is valued in terms of its ability to support initiatives that are perceived as economically viable and economically advantageous, maintaining centralised control of decision-making and serving the interests of those who profit from this arrangement. Government-derived environmental policies are presented in Chapter Two. They provide evidence of the conjoining of environment with economic rationalism and the adoption of a particular stance which is both utilitarian and instrumentalist. Emerging from this is an understanding of the limitations placed on environmental debates that do not respond to complex understandings of context and instead support and legitimate centralisation of decision-making and control. Chapter Three presents an argument for an historical approach to environmental education research to accommodate contextual dimensions, as well as scientific, economic and technical dimensions, of the subject under study. An historical approach to research, inclusive of biographical, intergenerational and geographical histories, goes some way to providing an understanding of current individual and collective responses to policy enactment within the two study sites. It also responds to the concealing of history which results from the reduction of environmental debates to economic terms. With this in mind, Chapters Four and Five provide two historical case studies of 'policy in practice'. Chapter Four traces the workings of a rabbit control project in the Sutton Grange district of Victoria and Chapter Five provides an account of a mouse plague project in the Wimmera and Mallee regions of Victoria. The Sutton Grange rabbit project is organised and controlled by district landholders while the Wimmera and Mallee mouse project is organised and controlled by representatives from a scientific organisation and a government agency. Considered in juxtaposition, the two case studies enable an analysis of two somewhat different expressions of the 'role of government'. Chapter Six investigates the competing processes of community participation in governmental decision-making and Australia's system of representative democracy, Despite a call for increased community participation, the majority of policies remain dominated by governmental rhetoric and ideology underpinned by a belief in impartiality. The primacy of economics is considered in terms of government and community interaction, with specific reference to the emergence of particular conceptual constructions, such as cost-benefit analysis, that support this dominance. Of specific importance to this thesis is the argument that economic theory is essentially anthropocentric and individualist and, thus, necessarily marginalises particular conceptions of environment that are non-anthropocentric and non-individualistic. Finally, Chapter Six examines two major interrelated tensions; those of central interests and community interests, and economic rationalism and environmentalist. Chapter Seven looks at examples of theories and practices that fall outside the rationality determined by scientistic knowledge. It is clear from the examination of environmental policy within this thesis that the role ascribed to environmental education is instrumentalist. The function of education is often to support, promote and implement policy and its advocated practices. It is also clear from the examination of policy and advocated processes that policy defines community education as a means of manifesting change as determined by policy, rather than as an input to governmental decision-making. The domination of scientific, economic and technocratic processes (and legitimation of processes) allows only for an instrumentalist approach to education from government. What is encouraged by government through the process of change is continuity rather than reform. It promotes change that will not disrupt the governing hegemony. Particular perspectives and practices, such as a critical approach to education, are omitted or considered only within the unquestioned rationale of the dominant worldview. Chapter Seven focuses on the consequence of government attention to policy which implicitly defines community education as a means of overcoming barriers to change, rather than as an input to governmental decision-making. Finally a list of recommendations is put forward as a starting point to reconstruct community-based environmental education. The role considered is one that responds to, and encourages engagement in, debates which expose disparate views, assumptions and positions. Community ideology must be challenged through the public practices of communication and understanding, decision-making, and action. Intervention is not on a level that encourages a preordinate outcome but, rather, what is encouraged is elaborate consideration of disparate views and rational opinions, and the exposure of assumptions and interests behind ideological positions.

Two Essays on the economics of Education

We develop a job-market signaling model where signals may convey two pieces of information. This model is employed to study the GED exam and countersignaling (signals non-monotonic in ability). A result of the model is that countersignaling is more expected to occur in jobs that require a combination of skills that differs from the combination used in the schooling process. The model also produces testable implications consistent with evidence on the GED: (i) it signals both high cognitive and low non-cognitive skills and (ii) it does not affect wages. Additionally, it suggests modifications that would make the GED a more effective signal.

Three essays on education from the perspective of the economics of public setor

This work consists of three essays organized into chapters that seek to answer questions at first sight unrelated, but with one common denominator, which is the scarcity of public resources devoted to education, overall, especially in lower education. . The first chapter deals with the scarcity of resources devoted to education in a context of population aging. Two hypotheses were tested for Brazilian municipalities on the relationship between the aging of the population and educational expenditure. The first, already proven in the literature, is that there is an intergenerational conflict for resources and the increase of the share of elderly in the population reduces the educational expenditure. The second, proposed here for the first time, is that there should be reduction of competition for resources if there is a relationship of co-residence between young and old. The results indicated that an increase in the share of elderly reduces the educational expenditure per youth. But the results also illustrate that an increase in the share of elderly co-residing with youth (family arrangement more common in Latin American countries) raises the educational expenditure, which reflects a reduction of competition for resources between generations. The second chapter assesses the allocative efficiency of investments in Higher Education. Using the difference between first-year and last-year students’ scores from Enade aggregated by HEI as a product in the Stochastic Production Function, is possible to contribute with a new element in the literature aimed at estimating the production function of education. The results show that characteristics of institutions are the variables that best explain the performance of students, and that public institutions are more inefficient than the private ones. Finally, the third chapter presents evidence that the allocation of public resources in early childhood education is important for a better future school performance. In this chapter was calculated the effects of early childhood education on literacy scores of children attending the 2nd grade of elementary school. The results using OLS and propensity score matching show that students who started school at the ages to 5, 4, and 3 years had literacy scores between 12.22 and 19.54 points higher than the scores of those who began school at the ages 6 years or late. The results also suggest that the returns in terms of literacy scores diminish in relation to the number of years of early childhood education.

Education and research in agriculture and home economics in the United States, Supplementing exhibit of the States Relations Service, United States Department of Agriculture at the Brazil centennial exposition, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 1922-1923.

Report prepared for the Commission of the United States of America to the Brazil centennial exposition.

A Comprehensive national plan for new initiatives in home economics research, extension, and higher education.

"January 1981."

Dictionary of philosophy and psychology : including many of the principal conceptions of ethics, logic, aesthetics, philosophy of religion, mental pathology, anthropology, biology, neurology, physiology, economics, political and social philosophy, philology, physical science, and education, and giving a terminology in English, French, German, and Italian /

Mode of access: Internet.

The British higher education funding debate: the perils of 'talking economics'

This article examines current debates surrounding British higher education funding from a political economy perspective, drawing on ‘positive’ and ‘institutionalist’ political economy. Adopting the lens of political economy enables a critical assessment of the use of terms drawn from economics by many higher education decision-makers. Current discussions embody particular assumptions about the nature of producers and consumers in higher education, the relationship between supply and demand, and the role of information in the higher education ‘market’. They also frequently fail to acknowledge the active rather than passive role of higher education institutions in shaping policy discussions surrounding higher education funding.

Essays on the Economics of Higher Education

At least since the seminal works of Jacob Mincer, labor economists have sought to understand how students make higher education investment decisions. Mincer’s original work seeks to understand how students decide how much education to accrue; subsequent work by various authors seeks to understand how students choose where to attend college, what field to major in, and whether to drop out of college.

Broadly speaking, this rich sub-field of literature contributes to society in two ways: First, it provides a better understanding of important social behaviors. Second, it helps policymakers anticipate the responses of students when evaluating various policy reforms.

While research on the higher education investment decisions of students has had an enormous impact on our understanding of society and has shaped countless education policies, students are only one interested party in the higher education landscape. In the jargon of economists, students represent only the `demand side’ of higher education---customers who are choosing options from a set of available alternatives. Opposite students are instructors and administrators who represent the `supply side’ of higher education---those who decide which options are available to students.

For similar reasons, it is also important to understand how individuals on the supply side of education make decisions: First, this provides a deeper understanding of the behaviors of important social institutions. Second, it helps policymakers anticipate the responses of instructors and administrators when evaluating various reforms. However, while there is substantial literature understanding decisions made on the demand side of education, there is far less attention paid to decisions on the supply side of education.

This dissertation uses empirical evidence to better understand how instructors and administrators make decisions and the implications of these decisions for students.

In the first chapter, I use data from Duke University and a Bayesian model of correlated learning to measure the signal quality of grades across academic fields. The correlated feature of the model allows grades in one academic field to signal ability in all other fields allowing me to measure both ‘own category' signal quality and ‘spillover' signal quality. Estimates reveal a clear division between information rich Science, Engineering, and Economics grades and less informative Humanities and Social Science grades. In many specifications, information spillovers are so powerful that precise Science, Engineering, and Economics grades are more informative about Humanities and Social Science abilities than Humanities and Social Science grades. This suggests students who take engineering courses during their Freshman year make more informed specialization decisions later in college.

In the second chapter, I use data from the University of Central Arkansas to understand how universities decide which courses to offer and how much to spend on instructors for these courses. Course offerings and instructor characteristics directly affect the courses students choose and the value they receive from these choices. This chapter reveals the university preferences over these student outcomes which best explain observed course offerings and instructors. This allows me to assess whether university incentives are aligned with students, to determine what alternative university choices would be preferred by students, and to illustrate how a revenue neutral tax/subsidy policy can induce a university to make these student-best decisions.

In the third chapter, co-authored with Thomas Ahn, Peter Arcidiacono, and Amy Hopson, we use data from the University of Kentucky to understand how instructors choose grading policies. In this chapter, we estimate an equilibrium model in which instructors choose grading policies and students choose courses and study effort given grading policies. In this model, instructors set both a grading intercept and a return on ability and effort. This builds a rich link between the grading policy decisions of instructors and the course choices of students. We use estimates of this model to infer what preference parameters best explain why instructors chose estimated grading policies. To illustrate the importance of these supply side decisions, we show changing grading policies can substantially reduce the gender gap in STEM enrollment.