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Educational Shortage and Excess*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 November 2014

M. J. Bowman
M. J. Bowman*
Affiliation:
University of Chicago
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Extract

Be he economist, educator, or politician, the man who will say of any industrially advanced country today that it provides an excess of education is rare indeed. It is not that education is viewed as a good thing in itself, so good that it is virtually impossible to have too much of it. The pronouncements in favour of ever more education are supported above all by assertions concerning the economic value of education. Never before has there been so much education. Yet never before has there been so much talk of the shortages of trained people or of the need to expand education as an investment in the formation of human capital. In an Alice-in-Wonderland sort of way it seems that the more we have the greater the shortage. Shortage is “in,” along with the “affluent society.”

Type
Articles
Information
Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science/Revue canadienne de economiques et science politique , Volume 29 , Issue 4 , November 1963 , pp. 446 - 461
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Political Science Association 1963

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Footnotes

*

Paper prepared for the Conference on Economics, Education and Social Change, Midwest meetings of the Comparative Education Society, Indiana University, Bloomington, January, 1963.

References

1 There is a considerable Russian literature, but the relevant studies have not been published in any other European language.

2 See, for example, Organization for European Economic Co-operation, The Problem of Scientific and Technical Manpower in Western Europe, Canada and the United States (Paris, 1957).Google Scholar Manuals and articles on the forecasting and planning of manpower supplies and demands have multiplied since 1957. Though increasingly sophisticated in presentation, procedures nevertheless remain essentially ad hoc, without foundations in analytical delineation of current or prospective shortage or excess.

3 On this issue see Bowman, M. J. and Anderson, C. A., “Concerning the Role of Education in Development,” in Geertz, C., ed., Old Societies and New States (London, 1983), 247–79.Google Scholar

4 As numbers of such people increase, hard realities break down resistances to undertaking types of activity not included in the high status occupational images. Such a change is clearly emerging in India today. It can sometimes mark a critically important step forward in economic development. The process has much in common with the role of “deviants” stressed by Everett Hagen, but it is nevertheless quite a different thing.

5 Seymour Harris (Cambridge, Mass., 1949). See especially chaps. i, ii, and vi.

6 See my “The Land Grant Colleges and Universities in Human-Resource Development,” Journal of Economic History, 12, 1962, 523–46.Google Scholar

7 Blank, D. M. and Stigler, George, Demand and Supply of Scientific Personnel, National Bureau of Economic Research, general series, no. 62 (New York, 1957). See especially 22–33.Google Scholar

8 National Manpower Council, A Policy for Scientific and Professional Manpower (New York, 1953), 144.Google Scholar

9 See Hansen, Lee, “The ‘Shortage’ of Engineers,” Review of Economics and Statistics, XLIII, no. 3, 08, 1961, 251–6.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

10 The first careful empirical analysis was presented by Friedman, Milton and Kuznets, Simon in their Income from Independent Professional Practice, National Bureau of Economic Research, Publication no. 45 (New York, 1945).Google Scholar Several articles in professional journals and assessments by various study committees as well as popular articles have appeared since-most recently the “Bane Report”—though only a fraction of these introduce the monopoly theme. Lee Hansen challenged most of the doctor shortage literature in a paper entitled “Shortages and Investment in Health Manpower,” presented at the Conference on the Economics of Health Services and Medical Care, University of Michigan, May 10–12, 1962.

11 A Policy for Scientific and Professional Manpower, 144–5.

12 For a systematic, simple discussion of rate-of-return analysis see my “Converging Concerns of Economists and Educators,” Comparative Education Review, VI, no. 2, 10, 1962, 111–19.Google Scholar

13 Hansen, Lee, “Total and Private Rates of Return to Investment in Schooling,” Journal of Political Economy, LXXI, no. 2, 04, 1963, 128–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Hansen has used this same method to compare several of the major professions in 1939, 1949, and 1956.

14 I am ignoring the consumption components of schooling itself.

15 See Hansen, W. Lee, “Educational Plans and Teacher Supply,” Comparative Education Review, VI, no. 2, 10, 1962, 136–41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

16 It is referred to repeatedly in The Times Educational Supplement.

17 For interesting discussions of teacher supply and salary questions see Kershaw, J. A. and McKean, L. N., Teacher Shortages and Salary Schedules (New York, 1962)Google Scholar, and Stigler, G. J., Employment and Compensation in Education, Occasional Paper 33, National Bureau of Economic Research (New York, 1950).Google Scholar

18 This should not be confused with education as a consumer good.

19 On this see my “Social Returns to Education,” International Social Science Journal, XIV, no. 4, 1962, 647–59.Google Scholar

20 See Mincer, Jacob, “On-the-job Training: Costs, Returns, and Some Implications,” Journal of Political Economy, LXX, no. 5, part 2 (Supplement on Investment in Human Beings), 10, 1962. Note especially Table 1, p. 55.Google Scholar