Role of Education in Economic Growth - Essay Example

At the same time, global competition has raised the importance of education (Dimmock, & Walker, 2005, p. viii). However, some countries have ignored the importance of their educational systems. Moreover, policymakers are reluctant to learn from the experiences of other nations, concerning educational policies and practices.
Despite these practices, the European nations have made it an important feature of their political agenda to change their systems of higher education. There has been a strident call, in these countries, to render higher education more socially relevant, in addition to modernizing, adapting, diversifying, and rendering more efficient and more service-oriented (Maassen, 2007).

A considerable amount of contention has arisen, in the last 25 years of the 20th century, regarding the central steering role of the nations of Europe, concerning higher education. This development is one of the aspects of the more general transformation that has occurred in the relationship between the public sector and the state (Maassen, 2007). Higher education has undergone the maximum change, on account of this transformation.

As such, higher education is now expected to better its products and procedures, improve labor market interaction, and enhance the management of its educational institutions. The success of such transformation is dependent on a drastic alteration in the longstanding relationship betwixt the institutions of higher education and the state authorities.
The economic and social development of a nation has become dependent on its ability to involve itself in the present-day economy. The extant economy is a knowledge-based economy that depends to a major extent on science and technology, unlike the erstwhile economy, which had been founded on material production (Sahlberg, 2006).
There is a new paradigm that is based on socio-economic globalization and networked industrial organizations. A certain amount of insularity had been prevalent in the field of education. The latter constitutes a national industry, and many a nation had been proud of the inimitability of its educational system. The general thinking among those who formulated national education policy was that there was no necessity to imitate or gain knowledge about the policies and practices of the other nations, in the field of education (Rizvi, & Lingard, 2010, p. 153).

All this has changed, and the forces of communication, economic scarcity, competition, technology, and transportation, or in other words the actuators of globalization are making it necessary to study and practice education as a socio-cultural process. Competition at the global level has compelled the policymakers of the government to accept the importance of education. It has now been realized that education is essential for development and economic competitiveness (Dimmock, & Walker, 2005, p. viii). This was glaringly evident, in the Asian crisis of 1997, wherein many Asian economic giants failed, as their social systems had been unable to adapt to the vast changes that had taken place in the global economy.
It had been the practice in the UK to provide education free of cost, even at the university level. Thereafter, universities were permitted to charge a fixed amount of £1,000 per annum, regardless of the subject of study. However, this amount proved to be inadequate, and to improve the funding position of the universities, the 2004 Higher Education Act was promulgated (Barr, 2010).