The purpose of this paper is to compare the role of human capital accumulation measured by number of years of schooling with the relative contribution of institutional capacity to prosperity. We employ several concepts of institutional quality prevalent in the literature. We discover that developing human capital is as important as superior…

Advocates for education have seized upon the current economic downturn as an opportunity to advance their cause. If governments are poised for an attempt to spend their way out of a deep recession, what better target than underfunded educational institutions, from daycare to universities? Public support for increased spending on education is…

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…

This paper first examines key differences between the traditional approaches of the USA and Italy in relation to innovation and entrepreneurship. The authors then turn to the specific example of southern Italy, which has experienced higher rates of unemployment, lower US investment and fewer educational and cultural exchanges than the rest of the…

With the dollar's continued swoon and grim news on the job front, American economic competitiveness has become a central theme in the presidential election. Stumping in Ohio and Pennsylvania, old-line industrial states hit hard by the flight of manufacturing jobs, Democrats Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama have called for renegotiating the…

This paper uses a combination of quantitative and qualitative evidence to assess the ways and extent to which, by 2007/2008, higher education graduates in the South Caucasus capitals were, and were not, deriving labour market benefits from their higher education. The quantitative evidence is from representative samples of approximately 200 in the…

The article's focus is the relationship between culture, indigenous knowledge systems (IKS), sustainable development and education in Africa. It analyzes the concept of sustainability with particular reference to education and indigenous knowledge systems. In particular the article analyzes the documents from the World Summit in Johannesburg in…

As globalization of the world economy continues unabated, a parallel growth of globalization of knowledge is also taking place. This latter trend is little affected by the boundaries between developed and less developed countries and is having a particular impact on trends in education. This article looks at the impact of globalization within the…

This article documents a trip that was made by students from the University of Akron's College of Business to visit Warren Buffett, chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway and the second richest man in the world at his Global Headquarters in Omaha, Nebraska. Every year, Buffett invites a select number of schools to Omaha to visit with him and tour…

Economic growth is stimulated through learning. In "the learning economies" of those European regions that chose to develop their human and intellectual capital wisely, benefits have been visible. But this is a one-dimensional outlook in a multi-dimensional world. A "Learning Region" is an entirely different entity, pooling and…

Local, state, and national economies are facing unprecedented levels of international competition. The current fiscal crisis has hampered the ability of many governments in the developed world to directly facilitate economic growth. At the same time, many governments in the developing world are investing significant new resources into local…

One of the two most extensive instrument collections in the Netherlands during the second half of the eighteenth century--rivaling the much better known collection at the University of Leiden--belonged to an orphanage in The Hague that was specially established to mold hand-picked orphans into productive citizens. (The other was housed at the…

In 2005 and 2006, the "High Schools That Work" ("HSTW") program of the Southern Regional Education Board (SREB) and the College and Career Transitions Initiative of the League for Innovation in the Community College (League) facilitated a series of 15 state-level forums aimed at identifying ways to foster collaboration between secondary and…

Social quality has been presented as a theory that can explain economic and social progress of the daily lives of a population. The components of social quality include: socio-economic security, social inclusion, social cohesion and social empowerment. The social quality perspective views people as interacting within collective identities that…

Research intensive universities have important roles in society and cannot be valued solely on the basis of their contribution to economic growth. Their activities are only part of the diverse spectrum of the higher education system which advanced societies need. League tables of universities discourage diversity, distort the goals of higher…