Learning and skills contribute to economic growth both directly, by improving the skills base available to employers, and indirectly, by underpinning the five foundations of productivity identified by the government: ideas, people, infrastructure, business environment, and places. This is the case for all levels of learning from basic skills to…

Drawing on the work of educational anti-consumerists such as David F. Noble (2002) as well as design theory (Cross, 2006; Dorst, 2011; Farrell & Hooker, 2013) and adaptive leadership (Heifetz, Grashow, & Linsky, 2009), these authors frame the complex interactions involving teaching and learning along a spectrum bracketed by training on one…

Goldin and Katz's "The Race between Education and Technology" is a monumental achievement that supplies a unified framework for interpreting how the demand and supply of human capital have shaped the distribution of earnings in the U.S. labor market over the 20th century. This essay reviews the theoretical and conceptual underpinnings of this work…

The first installment in the "To Learn and Earn" project, published in March 2009, concluded that Arizona has "unfinished business" in human capital--the knowledge and skills that are so important to stimulating innovation, creating wealth, and promoting economic growth. It identified the next step in finding solutions as…

Progress in educational development in the world since 1900 has been slow and uneven between countries. Providing basic education for all children in developing countries has been and remains an unmet challenge of governments and international organizations alike. This is in sharp contrast to recent findings in the economics literature on the…

The higher education in Nigeria has witnessed a tremendous growth in the last 50 years in terms of producing manpower that could bring about development. However, the problem of Nigeria today is not about human and natural resources, but how to translate the human potentials to meet the realization of its all round development and sustain economic…

Against a backdrop of some two decades of sustained economic growth in Ghana, this paper argues that there are a series of sustainability challenges related to technical and vocational skills development (TVSD) that need to be addressed. This paper analyses several sustainability dimensions of TVSD related to: promoting the sustainability of…

In 2007, Michigan undertook a bold mission: to retrain tens of thousands of adults to qualify for jobs in emerging and expanding sectors of the economy. The state's proposal to jobless, dislocated, and low-income residents was simple but appealing: enroll in up to two years of postsecondary education, and Michigan would cover up to $5,000 in…

Raising Arizona was the challenge of the 20th century. Sustaining Arizona is now the challenge of the 21st. A crucial part of that task is not just understanding today's knowledge economy, but mastering it. Ray and Charles Eames, the creative geniuses behind many iconic 20th century designs, debuted their film "Powers of 10" in 1977. In…

Canada weathered the global economic crisis well, mainly reflecting sustained growth in domestic pending, and the economy is continuing to grow despite the persistence of international turbulence, most recently stemming from the euro zone sovereign debt crisis. In Canada's case, several factors are acting in its favour. Federal fiscal plans are…

Innovation has powered America's economy, creating good jobs and a high standard of living. Yet, the U.S. share of innovation-based industries is in decline, jeopardizing our status as the world's innovation leader. And one reason is that the United States has been unable to produce enough of its own workers with sufficient skills in science,…

Despite economic theory postulating that increases in investment in human capital and physical capital leads to increase in economic growth, in the Kenyan case, this has not been true. This paper empirically examines the contribution of human capital and physical capital to economic growth in Kenya. Measures to be undertaken by higher education…

Is the United States getting it wrong when it comes to educating tomorrow's innovators in critical fields? It has been known for years that the only way to compete globally in information technology, engineering, nanotechnology, robotics and other fields is to give students the best educational opportunities possible. But do individuals have a…

Describes the California Community Colleges' goal to advance the state's economic growth through quality economic development programs. Discusses the importance of assessment and presents the results of an outcome evaluation, stating that California will collect $1.42 in taxes over the next 10 years for every dollar it spent on economic…

Technical and vocational education (TVE) can influence development and economic progress for post-colonial societies. Some newly independent sub-Saharan African countries attempted curricular transformation that might produce a skilled workforce through widespread access to versions of TVE. In Cameroon, no such post-colonial curricular revolution…