Question

Explain why the application of economics is important in the education sector

Answer 1

ROLE OF EDUCATION IN ECONOMICS

Education in every sense is one of the fundamental factors of development. No country can achieve sustainable economic development without substantial investment in human capital. Education enriches people’s understanding of themselves and world. It improves the quality of their lives and leads to broad social benefits to individuals and society. Education raises people’s productivity and creativity and promotes entrepreneurship and technological advances. In addition it plays a very crucial role in securing economic and social progress and improving income distribution.

IMPORTANCE OF EDUCATION IN ECONOMICS

The importance of economic education goes far beyond the goal of improving understanding of the basic principles of supply and demand and the workings of our nation's economy. Economics is the study of how people make sound choices. By studying how markets work, our young people also learn how to make efficient choices in managing their own scarce resources, such as time and money. Along the way, we teach them a decision- and choice-making process that they can apply to all aspects of their lives. These same skills are necessary to make informed choices as citizens to decide which public policies to support and which to oppose.

As participants in a global economy, the young people of today and tomorrow will face a abundance of possibilities that our generation could only dream about. It is our duty to give them the tools they need to make the best choices among these seemingly infinite possibilities. And, although I am perhaps a bit biased (probably more than a bit!) given my background, I believe that economics can provide such tools unlike any other discipline.

Students will acquire the below knowledge skills:

-To understand and analyze education policy problems. Examples of issues being currently debated are the effect over efficiency and equality of opportunities of significantly increasing college tuition fees in Spain; whether it is profitable for the society and for the individual to invest more in education, differencing by levels of education; the social and private returns rates of the effect over the quality of education of the increase in the student/teacher ratio; properties of different school choice systems; effects, causes and solutions of the high school drop out rates; etc.

- To understand and analyze the role of education on countries' development.

- To understand, estimate, and interpret functions of costs and demand in order to know their determinants. and to show their utility for the formulation of education policies.

- To understand, estimate and analyze the effects of determinants of the quality of education and to show their utility to evaluate education policies.

- To analyze the public sector intervention in education.

- To study and compare different systems of financing Education and their effects.

- To learn research strategies specific to the empirical research on the Economics of Education.

- Development of individual and personality through various Participation.

- Enhance in learning and developing skill.

This includes learning techniques, and the the use of statistical resources, among other things. This particular skill will be very useful, for example, in doing the Bachelor thesis.

Moreover, students will improve the following skills : -

Analytical and presentation skills of scientific results.

- Ability to evaluate empirical research in Economics of Education.

- Critical analysis of theoretical model and empirical strategies used to answer relevant questions about the economics of education and to evaluate education policies. With respect to attitudes, as a result of the work done in this course, the following attitudes will be strengthen:

- Curiosity and interest for solving empirical problem with rigour, and to test and quatify answer to questions in this subject.

- Ability of understand and compare several theories offering alternative explanations to a given observed fact.

- Critical attitude to detect wrong arguments and reasonings in the evaluation of education policies.