Search

China's higher-education system has been shaped in recent years by a trio of factors: the COVID-19 pandemic, the ambitions of Chinese leader Xi Jinping to make his country into an innovation superpower that is loyal to the Communist Party, and western alarm about those ambitions. But a fourth development, the slowing of China's formerly super-charged economy, could play a more prominent role going forward. This article examines these four factors.

This paper estimates private and social returns to investment in education in Azerbaijan, using the 2015 Azerbaijan Monitoring Survey for Social Welfare. The private rate of return to education is 6 percent; this is the first estimate of returns to schooling in Azerbaijan since 1995. The returns to schooling are 6 percent for men and 8 percent for women, even controlling for selection. In addition, the paper estimates the returns for higher education; for this level, the rate of return is 9 percent. Finally, using the full discount method, the private rate of return to tertiary education is 9 percent, and the social rate of return is 8 percent. One policy implication is to re-examine the funding of higher education and for its expansion. [This paper is a product of the Education Global Practice.]

This paper looks at how countries have mobilized additional resources for education and assesses their impact on access and learning outcomes, using the World Bank's new Learning-Adjusted Years of Schooling measure. The paper shows that global spending on education has risen significantly over the past two decades, although spending as a share of gross domestic product has remained relatively unchanged, at about 4.5 percent. However, global trends mask large differences across regions and country income groups. For example, low-income countries recorded the largest increases in terms of the share of GDP spent on education, but the absolute amount they devoted to education remained low compared to other countries. Economic growth has been the main driver of increases in public education spending. Yet, countries that achieved the largest and most rapid spending increases did this through a combination of increases in overall government revenues, a greater prioritization of education in the government budget as well as healthy economic growth. Increases in public education spending did not generally result in major improvements in average education outcomes. Using the available data, the paper shows that a doubling of government spending per child led to an increase in learning-adjusted years of schooling of only half a year. Preliminary findings also show that countries with lower efficiency and spending are expected to get the most from increases in spending in improved education outcomes. The paper concludes by outlining an approach that allows countries to assess their potential for increasing education funding and the expected effects on their education outcomes, based on benchmarks drawing from the data of comparable countries. It also underscores the urgent need to improve data on public education spending and education outcomes, to extend this analysis to cover a wider set of countries and increase the robustness of country-level benchmarks. [This paper is a product of the Education Global Practice.]

International students are critical to the competitiveness of American higher education in terms of financial, intercultural, and educational contributions. However, recent data indicates that the U.S institutions enrolled 31,520 fewer international students in Fall 2017 as compared to Fall 2016. At average tuition and fees of US$ 25,000, higher education institutions are likely to lose potential revenue of US$ 788 million for the first year of studies alone. This paper examines the shifting landscape of international enrollment from the lens of three overlapping Waves spread over seven years and takes a deeper dive into implications for American universities. Wave I was shaped by the terrorist attacks in September 2001 and resulted in slower overall growth in international student enrollment of 11% between 1999 and 2006. Wave II has its origins in the global financial crisis which prompted universities to search for self-funded students and experienced overall robust growth of 44 percent in international student enrollment between 2006 and 2013. Finally, Wave III is shaped by the new political order and intensified competition from English-taught programs in Europe and Asia which will slow down the pace of projected growth in international enrollment to 18 percent between 2013 and 2020. In this current Wave of intensified global competition, overall international student enrollment is likely to flatten or decline for most universities. While the reputation and quality of American higher education is admired and emulated around the world, resting on its past laurels will not be sufficient for attracting international students in the Third Wave. This means that universities must get proactive and strategic in reaching, engaging and supporting international students throughout their educational lifecycle. Demand for studying abroad among international students remains robust, however, increasing competition and expectations for value for money will requires proactive and concerted efforts to maintain the global competitiveness of American higher education.

We explore the recent undertaking in El Salvador to establish the country's first industry-higher education clusters in four economic sectors critical to growth and competitiveness: (1) information and communication technology; (2) light manufacturing; (3) energy and energy efficiency; and (4) agroindustry and food processing. These clusters take a systems approach to aligning higher education institutions (HEIs) with the talent and research needs of the private sector. Under the United States Agency for International Development's "Higher Education for Economic Growth" project, RTI International designed and facilitated a three-phase, 10-step process, beginning with the careful and transparent selection of sectors, followed by early engagement of key stakeholders, to form clusters and establish formal structures necessary for sustained multisector dialogue. The discourse ultimately culminated in the creation of data-driven strategic and operational plans guiding cluster actions. This paper documents this detailed process and highlights early successes and challenges observed. Finally, learnings and insights are also offered for those wishing to undertake a similar systems-level approach to collaboration between HEIs and industry with the goal of producing tangible, sector-level economic benefits.

The acceptance of new growth theory relates, in part, to a number of highly touted regional success stories--or what I term "Knowledge Based Economic Areas" (KBEAs) in this and past essays. The United States, and California in particular, is viewed as perhaps the most robust creators of KBEAs, providing an influential model that is visited and revisited by business and government leaders, and other Flagship (or leading national) universities, that wish to replicate their strengths within their own cultural and political terms. While California has a number of unique characteristics, including a robust University of California system with a strong internal academic culture and devotion to public service, the story of its historical and contemporary success as an agent of economic development is closely linked to a number of key contextual factors. These relate to the internal culture, governance and management capacity of major universities in the United States, national investment patterns in R&D, the business environment, including the concentration of Knowledge Based Businesses, the acceptance of risk, and the availability of venture capital, legal variables related to Intellectual Property (IP) and tax policies, the quality of regional workforces, and quality of life factors that are important components for attracting and retaining talent. In most of these KBEAs variables, California has enjoyed an advantage that helps to partially explain the success of the University of California (UC) and other major research universities as agents of economic development. This study focuses on seven contextual variables common to all KBEAs in the United States and much of the world, and with particular attention to the UC system--a network of ten research-intensive campuses. General Principles for a University Governing Board Association of Governing Boards (AGB) are appended.

The number of countries that regularly participate in international large-scale assessments has increased sharply over the past 15 years, with the share of countries participating in the Programme for International Student Assessment growing from one-fifth of countries in 2000 to over one-third of countries in 2015. What accounts for this increase? This paper explores the evidence for three broad explanations: globalization of assessments, increasing technical capacity for conducting assessments, and increased demand for the microeconomic and macroeconomic data from these assessments. Data were compiled from more than 200 countries for this analysis, for six time periods between 2000 and 2015, yielding more than 1,200 observations. The data cover each country's participation in each of six cycles of PISA as it relates to the country's level of economic development, region, prior experience with assessment, and OECD membership. The results indicate that the odds of participation in PISA are markedly higher for OECD member countries, countries in the Europe and Central Asia region, high- and upper-middle-income countries, and countries with previous national and international assessment experience; the paper also finds that regional assessment experience is unrelated to PISA participation.

This paper focuses on China both as an object and a subject in the globalization of higher education and the sometimes paradoxical nature of the country's policies in this respect. How is the Chinese perspective on globalization shaping its agenda for higher education, the development of world-class universities, and cooperation with Europe and the West? What is China's role in the globalization of higher education, its global agency in higher education, and the impact of its diaspora, soft power, and its new Silk Routes policies? What is its capacity to become a global leader in higher education, i.e. in creating global public goods, such as knowledge and educational opportunity? It seems that China's higher education focus is shifting, widening, and diversifying. It is seeking a leading role along its New Silk Roads, primarily in its neighboring region, but potentially reaching out into Europe. This is in line with its renewed economic policy, aimed at innovating its large-scale manufacturing sector and reducing regional inequalities. A more diversified higher education system should come along to support this. At the same time, China is still an important basis for talent recruitment by the US and Europe. China's higher education sector is thus becoming more complex and will require a next level of strategic management, facilitated by new governance models which allow institutions to seize their opportunities, while guiding the country as a whole towards a "World-Class System."

In pursuit of enhanced employability of university graduates, along with their increased mobility in a rapidly globalizing economy, colleges and universities in the world today participate in regional alliances and partnerships in which shared targets with mutually recognized degrees and curricula are sought across boundaries through transnational higher education policies. The Bologna Process is certainly exemplified as one of the most important multilateral efforts in the recent history of higher education, in establishing such a system of quality assurance within the European Higher Education Area. Although the member states of the Bologna Process endeavor to meet the common benchmarks on the preset assessment criteria, the speed of policy implementation is found to widely vary across the participating countries. This paper attempts to identify the sources of discrepancies in achieving the common policy targets among the member states and explore in particular the extent to which varying stages of socio-economic as well as political development, along with indigenous ethnic and linguistic complexities, affect the robust progress of implementing multilateral higher education policies. Our findings generally suggest significant impacts of these indigenous factors.

Five areas essential to developing partnerships between the education systems and economies of the countries of Central and Eastern Europe were analyzed: (1) state and social partner roles in supporting links between education/training and the economy; (2) contribution of the world of work to education and training; (3) education/training to underpin economic growth processes; (4) supporting people at the interface between education/training and work; and (5) role of teacher training in linking education/training and the economy. Selected conclusions of the analysis were as follows: (1) correlation of human resource development strategies and employment strategies is essential to enlargement of the European Union; (2) the state should provide the policy and legislative framework to support links between education and the economy; (3) the economy should increasingly contribute to training so that training can become more responsive to labor market needs; (4) promotion of entrepreneurial skills, qualification of the work force by targeting continuing training, and promotion of regional development by tertiary educational institutions are important in promoting growth through education and training; (5) support of the transition from education/training to work must be improved; and (6) teachers' and trainers' capabilities to make learning relevant to labor market needs should be strengthened. (MN)

It's a familiar if not fully explained paradigm. A "World Class University" (WCU) is supposed to have highly ranked research output, a culture of excellence, great facilities, and a brand name that transcends national borders. But perhaps most importantly, the particular institution needs to sit in the upper echelons of one or more world rankings generated each year by non-profit and for-profit entities. That is the ultimate proof for many government ministers and for much of the global higher education community. Or is it? It is not that current rankings are not useful and informative. The problem is that they represent a very narrow band of what it means to be a leading, or what might be best called a "Flagship" university within a region, within a nation. Further, WCU advocates do not provide much guidance, or knowledge, on what organizational behaviors and methods can lead to greater productivity in research, teaching, "and" public service that can best help universities meet the needs of the societies they must serve. In this essay I attempt to advocate the notion of the "Flagship University" as a more relevant ideal--a model for public institutions, and perhaps some private institutions, one that could replace, or perhaps supplement and alter the perceptions, behaviors, and goals of ministries and universities in their drive for status and influence on society. It is a model that does not ignore international standards of excellence focused largely on research productivity, but is grounded in national and regional service, and with a specific set of characteristics and responsibilities that, admittedly, do not lend themselves to ranking regimes. Indeed, one goal here is to articulate a path, using the language of the "Flagship University," that de-emphasizes rankings and that helps broaden the focus beyond research to relevancy and responsibility. "Flagship Universities" are research-intensive institutions, or in the process of becoming so, but have wider recognized goals. The great challenge for the network of universities that are truly leaders in their own national higher education systems is to shape their missions and, ultimately, to meaningfully expand their role in the societies that gave them life and purpose. The "Flagship University" profile explored here includes an outline of mission, culture, and operational features, and is intended as a possible construct for this cause. An appendix presents the Assigned Characteristics of a WCU.

We argue that place-based college scholarships, if designed intentionally and leveraged effectively, can foster local economic development. Since the introduction of the Kalamazoo Promise in 2005, a growing number of communities have applied the place-based approach to investments in human capital through the creation of college scholarship programs. Reviewing the existing literature on educational and economic outcomes associated with Promise programs reveals that they can expand students' postsecondary aspirations, improve a school district's college-going culture, and increase college enrollment and degree attainment while promoting immigration of residents and positive growth in housing prices. Therefore, these programs can serve a broader communal interest, benefiting both individuals (e.g., through higher earnings) and their localities. We conclude this report by outlining observations for city leaders and local policymakers that can be distilled into lessons concerning the civic engagement and economic vitality of a community, the attainment of equity in student outcomes, and the scale and sustainability of a program's design. We hope the evidence presented in this report will aid in the design, adoption, and scaling of programs that harness community assets and respond to community needs. [For the accompanying policy brief, see ED598184.]

During the past 5 years, groundbreaking studies of adult literacy and literacy education have been conducted that can help policymakers and practitioners shape the next generation of adult literacy work in the United States. Among the topics examined in those studies were the following: relationship between literacy and economic well-being; literacy instruction and measurement; workplace literacy and competitiveness; English as a second language; family literacy; professionalization and standards; and electronic technologies in education. It was discovered that, despite increased awareness of adult literacy as a social issue and increased enrollment in literacy programs, efforts to improve adult literacy have not yet brought the dramatic gains for which policymakers, the literacy community, or the public have hoped. Useful ways to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of adult literacy programs were identified, and specific recommendations concerning adult literacy practice, research, and policy were formulated. It was concluded that making major gains toward the goal of a fully literate United States will require the following: more funding of literacy efforts; better targeting of available resources toward improving customer service; tailoring programs to address diverse needs; and developing user-friendly educational technologies. (Contains 74 endnotes and 88 references.) (MN)

Economic downturns have a particularly strong impact upon new entrants to the labour market. These can include recently arrived migrants and refugees, women returning to the labour force after a period of child rearing, and youth. This paper reflects on the impact of the recent financial crisis on particular groups in Australian society and comments on whether the VET sector is well placed to meet the challenges of the recovery. An overview accompanies this paper. (Contains 7 tables, 1 figure, and 10 footnotes.)

Increasing evidence shows that investing in social sector supply, service, and value chains has exponentially stronger development impact than investments in other sectors. There are often severely lacking social services such as child care, elder care, health care delivery, prescription drug distribution, home schooling, and private sector training. These areas serve people (even the poorest people) who are willing to pay for or make contributions towards the overall costs. Weak social systems are, as Elinor Ostrom describes them, "collective action problems" where a common pool of resources is needed with "polycentric small units nested in larger systems," i.e., within markets for social good there are needs for state-sponsored social systems, supporting services delivery enterprises, entrepreneurs who identify gaps and fill them through charity or investment, and workforce agencies and businesses that provide people with the skills needed to expand access, affordability, and employment in social sectors. (Contains 8 endnotes.) [For "Taking Workforce Initiatives to Scale: Workforce Initiatives Discussion Paper #2," see ED520198.]

The current and still-evolving role of the American research university has been shaped by four key developments in the past sixty-five years: the historic decision to establish a comprehensive postwar federal science policy, described in Vannevar Bush's 1945 report, "Science, The Endless Frontier;" the Bayh-Dole Act of 1980; economic analyses from the 1950s onward that have validated the central role of knowledge in economic growth and influenced government and university policy on industry-university research; and various experiments with such research that have led to an increasing integration of research universities and industrial partners in the pursuit of innovation. Can American research universities continue to meet intensifying demands for innovation that advances regional, state, and national economic growth? This paper answers the question with a conditional yes. It describes the trend toward closer relations between universities and industry and how this trend is encouraging new ways of conducting scientific research and new forms of organization within the research university. It concludes with several recommendations for preserving the competitive advantage research universities contribute to American economic leadership: correcting our underinvestment in research in certain disciplines, such as the physical and social sciences; ensuring that federal support for research is sufficient to train graduate students in the numbers needed for national economic competitiveness and to encourage young faculty to pursue research projects with potential for innovative breakthroughs; and to make it easier for foreign-born students to remain in this country once they have earned advanced degrees in American universities. (Contains 18 endnotes.) [This report was prepared as the basis for Richard C. Atkinson's remarks at the Conference of Presidents of Academies and Scholarly Societies in honor of the fiftieth anniversary of the establishment of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, March 14-17, 2010, Jerusalem, Israel.]

It will take years for the labor market to recover from the damage induced by the recent recession. While monthly job losses almost surely peaked in 2009, the unemployment rate will likely peak in 2010 (CBO 2010a). In April, the unemployment rate reached 9.9% and the overall economic cause is simple: firms are not hiring quickly enough, as indicated by the 5.6 job seekers per current job opening. The 290,000 jobs gained in April, the largest monthly job gain in three years, represent a baby step in climbing out of the jobs hole of 10.7 million that remains in the recession's wake. For the class of 2010, it will be one of the worst years to graduate high school or college since at least 1983 and possibly the worst since the end of World War II. This paper documents several aspects of the grim labor market situation facing young graduates. It also discusses ways that government policy both helps and ways that it fails to help young workers damaged by the recession. The class of 2010 is graduating at a particularly bad time, and their poor job prospects are manifestly not their fault. They need a response from policy makers that appreciates these facts. (Contains 9 figures, 1 table, and 6 endnotes.)

The overall economic well-being of U.S. rural communities is on the decline. Rural America is now dependent on a highly diversified economy, and its problems will not be resolved through improved farm income alone. Various weaknesses in rural development policies must be addressed. The narrow policy focus on attracting manufacturing industries to rural areas has hindered needed economic restructuring and helped only a few communities. In many rural areas, aging infrastructures have been neglected, and modern telecommunications systems are not available. Years of selective outmigration have left rural areas short of human capital, and financial capital sources are inadequate in rural areas. Four existing policy options are described, and an approach that brings all four together into one comprehensive policy is advocated. A collaborative funding effort implemented by regional councils composed of a collaboration of stakeholders is recommended in place of the previous approach of pouring money into just one agency. The Colorado Rural Revitalization Program (CRRP) is described and presented as an effective model for rural economic development. A six-step blueprint for policy formation, implementation, and evaluation is based on identifying public preferences and implementing a stakeholder model with an evaluation-feedback cycle. Contains 17 references. (TD)

In this paper the authors identified the size of America's home market as a crucial component of its historical comparative advantage. The authors showed that over the last four decades nearly 60 percent of per capita U.S. growth has been dependent upon growth in the domestic consumption. Thus, a comprehensive demand side strategy also must target the domestic consumers U.S. businesses know best. On the supply side, they asked themselves what education and skills matter for individual and national economic success in the global economy? The authors' research demonstrated that education matters for growth and college matters the most. Boosting college completion rates by just 10 percent would inject $125 billion into the economy over the long run. Education credentials often serve as a signaling devise that employers use to gauge what potential hires might know and be able to do on the job. Employers are really interested in the knowledge, skills and abilities people bring to the workplace, not just their education credentials. The authors examined a new data set to test this hypothesis and found preliminary evidence to support it. The authors showed that the greater the level of skill required of occupations, the higher the education levels of job incumbents. Secondly, they found that the greater the level of skill required of occupations, the greater the average earnings for workers in those occupations, after holding constant the level of education. Consequently, not only is there a clear payoff to education, there also is an independent payoff to higher skills. And that appears true not only for competencies like innovation, critical thinking, and complex problem solving, but also for basic skills and social skills that are important in interacting with colleagues and customers. They also found that these competencies were useful in estimating which jobs are most vulnerable to being offshored overseas. In conclusion, they recognize that globalization is neither automatically beneficial nor universally destructive. Neither their analysis nor history offer assurances, though their work does suggest some ways forward. Therefore, they should identify strategies that will enable America to seize opportunities presented by globalization while minimizing its negative effects on communities, workers, and their families. Average Earnings by Education of Workers and the Competency Level Occupations Require are appended. (Contains 14 figures, 8 tables and 57 endnotes.) [This paper was written with Zamira Simkins.]

Efforts to establish, test and analyse hypotheses regarding cross-country variations in women's economic status are hampered by the lack of a readily accessible and easily used information resource on the various dimensions of gender inequality. Addressing this gap, this paper introduces the Gender, Institutions and Development data base (GID) www.oecd.org/dev/institutions/GIDdatabase of the OECD Development Centre. The GID constitutes an important improvement upon existing sources, notably because it incorporates institutional variables related to norms, laws, codes of conduct, customs, and family traditions that heretofore have been neglected in quantitative comparative studies. To illustrate the utility of the GID, the paper models the determinants of women's participation in the labour force -- an indicator of gender equality as well as an important ingredient for long-run economic growth -- and demonstrates that the economic role of women hinges critically on variations in discriminatory social institutions. (A bibliography is included. Contains 4 footnotes, 6 figures and 6 tables.)

A challenge for contemporary rural educators (especially teachers) is how to imagine rural education in a way that is not entirely focused on defining the rural as a problems space or as something simultaneously left behind by history and outmigration. Problems of community economic development come into the picture when we attempt to imagine rural schools that support and contribute to their communities rather than mostly serving as way-stations for outward bound youth. These are the kinds of questions raised by the ACCLAIM project, organized by the University of Tennessee Knoxville, Ohio University, West Virginia University, the University of Louisville, and the University of Kentucky. ACCLAIM is doing ground-breaking work in the United States simply by asking a number of key questions about the relationship between math education and rurality that concern what difference place might make in math education. Because this is a relatively new area and one which has not been researched in the Canadian context the author decided to take up an invitation from Craig Howley of ACCLAIM by raising a series of questions with math educators in rural Nova Scotia addressing five key questions (the final three of which are central to the ACCLAIM mission): (1) What difference does place make in mathematics and what difference does it make in mathematics education?; (2) Mathematics has been presented as a decontextualized, metalanguage that sits outside politics, culture and place. It is also constructed as a representation of pure intelligence because it is not linguistically anchored. Finally, because it is lifted out of context, math is often used as a sorting and selection mechanism both in school and for occupational and academic placements outside school. What has been the impact on this way of seeing and using mathematics on contextualized teaching; (3) What kinds of mathematical knowledge sustains place?; (4) What sorts of mathematical knowledge accommodates place well?; and (5) What kinds of mathematical preparation suits a rural world of greater scarcity? In the film "Putting Mathematics in its place: In conversation with David Reid and Christine Knipping," developed for ACCLAIM, they take up the questions above. The author takes up a baker's dozen of issues that seem to him to arise from the conversation. (Contains 1 footnote.)

School choice research mostly focuses on academic outcomes. Policymakers increasingly view entrepreneurial traits as a non-cognitive outcome important for economic growth. We use international PISA-2006 (Programme for International Student Assessment -2006) student-level data to estimate the effect of private-school competition on students' entrepreneurial intentions. We exploit Catholic-Church resistance to state schooling in 19th century as a natural experiment to obtain exogenous variation in current private-school shares. Our instrumental-variable results suggest that a 10 percentage-point higher private-school share raises students' entrepreneurial intentions by 0.3-0.5 percentage points (11-18 percent of the international mean) even after controlling for current Catholic shares, students' academic skills, and parents' entrepreneurial occupation. (Contains 6 tables and 8 footnotes.) [Partial funding for this research was provided by the Fritz Thyssen Foundation.]

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) is in the midst of tremendous economic development. With a rapidly changing economy, it is increasingly important for this expatriate dependent country to start training a native, modern workforce with the skills required to enter the workplace. The UAE must continue improving and developing their higher education system if it wants to create graduates with the training and education required to compete with students and workers from over-seas. This paper will describe the UAE's higher education system, as well as current and potential obstacles for UAE universities to overcome, focusing on issues such as funding concerns and student access. (Contains 1 table and 2 figures.)

This paper is a response to the collective interests expressed by a network of the leadership of ten U.S. community college systems to better understand how community colleges can support emerging state cluster-based economic development strategies. The intent is to proved concrete applications of a cluster-based model that inform both workforce and economic development policy and decision makers, bringing together two agendas that states usually pursue separately. The paper presents an initial model of a cluster-based workforce delivery system based on: (1) college practices observed and studied in the U.S. and around the world; (2) direct experience with cluster building strategies; (3) emerging theories and innovations; and (4) the experience and wisdom of members of the network. According to the authors, industry clusters have become the new mantra for economic development policy. Regional technical institutions are best able to focus on and respond to regional economies. Therefore, the paper argues, these institutions would do well to practice institutional and system-wide cooperation in order to develop specific expertise that will help them to become a particular business cluster's center of excellence. The paper presents an assortment of special features that some colleges have added to address the needs of clusters. The choices colleges make should reflect industry and student needs; local availability of and access to programs, services, and budgets; and long-term development plans of the state and region. (Contains 13 references.) (NB)

In his recent bestseller The World Is Flat, Thomas Friedman argues that countries like the United States can no longer compete in the global economy on the basis of making and selling commodities. Their competitive edge increasingly comes from how well they produce products, services, and technologies that are new . . . special . . . non-standard--and thus not easily produced across the globe by competitors. In this paper, we look at the educational implications of this crisis--implications that are both profound and alarming. We argue that young people in the United States today are being prepared for "commodity jobs" in a world that will, very soon, only reward people who can do innovative work and punish those who can't. The problem is being exacerbated by a new equity gap, in which some students have access at home to the technologies they need to prepare for life in a digital world, but many do not--a problem made worse by current educational policies that focus on giving students standardized skills for standardized tests rather than preparation for creative thinking and innovative work. We argue that the time to tinker with schools, as we have done for decades, is over, and that the change we need is neither liberal nor conservative. We make the case here that the same technologies that are creating this crisis provide a potential solution, and we propose the concept of epistemic games as one way to solve this looming crisis of learning. (Contains 1 figure.)

This article introduces original annual average years of schooling measures for each state from 1840 to 2000. The paper also combines original data on real state per-worker output with existing data to provide a more comprehensive series of real state output per worker from 1840 to 2000. These data show that the New England, Middle Atlantic, Pacific, East North Central, and West North Central regions have been educational leaders during the entire time period. In contrast, the South Atlantic, East South Central, and West South Central regions have been educational laggards. The Mountain region behaves differently than either of the aforementioned groups. Using their estimates of average years of schooling and average years of experience in the labor force, the authors estimate aggregate Mincerian earnings regressions. Their estimates indicate that a year of schooling increased output by between 8 percent and 12 percent, with a point estimate close to 10 percent. These estimates are in line with the body of evidence from the labor literature. (Supplemental information is provided in 4 appendices. Contains 36 footnotes, 15 tables and unnumbered figures.)

This report introduces, analyzes, and summarizes for policymakers an extensive and diverse economics literature on the effects of public K-12 education spending on local, regional, and state economies. The effects of education spending appear in indicators ranging from economic development to employment rates, small business starts, personal income, and housing values. The report offers real-world evidence that providing a quality K-12 public education for all is one of the best investments that governments can make. Therefore, policymakers should engage in serious thought and analysis before taking cost-saving steps that reduce the quality of public education to solve a local, state, or even federal budget shortfall. The paper looks at the effects of education spending and educational quality--as distinct from education spending--on economic indicators such as an individual's lifetime earnings, residential property values, manufacturing activity in a state, and small business start-ups in a state. (Contains 15 tables.)

This working paper is intended to enrich an initial description of alternative businesses and A-Way Express Couriers, in particular. (A-Way, a 12-year-old community organization, is a psychiatric survivor-run alternative business.) The paper begins with a brief commentary on the psychiatric survivor movement and research on it. The paper traces the emergence and entrenchment of learning as a key feature of psychiatric survivor-run or alternative businesses. The methodology used is to re-read previous research projects and results through the lens of informal learning. Early research on psychiatric survivor-run businesses is reviewed in view of a definition of social learning with these three dimensions: solidarity learning, reshaping the definition of self, and organizational learning. A more detailed examination of informal learning processes at A-Way builds on a previously generated profile and is organized according to the three dimensions of social learning. Comments are based on face-to-face interviews with five employees from each of these three groupings within A-Way: couriers on commission, part-time office staff on salaries, and full-time management on salaries. The final section constructs a narrative account of one woman's learning at A-Way--how over nine years she moved from courier to executive director of the business on a journey that evokes the richness and complexity of informal learning in this context. (YLB)