Beyond Ideology: Rebalancing Education Aid

Beyond Ideology: Rebalancing Education Aid

Education has been found to have two categories of influences. In terms of monetary influences, the higher one’s level of education, the less likely one is to be unemployed or in poverty, and the more likely one is to be advantaged in terms of income and income security. Moreover, what is true of individuals is also true of communities and nations. In terms of nonmonetary influences, education has been found to affect personal health and nutrition practices, child rearing and participation in voluntary activities. It also influences the efficiency of public communications and the degree to which adults seek new knowledge and skills over a lifetime.

How communities learn, therefore, is a principal ingredient of their development. In modern economies, schools and universities are the primary means by which knowledge is passed to new generations and how new knowledge is systematically incorporated.

Education first began to be included as a component of foreign assistance in the early 1960s. Initially, education aid was deployed to support workforce development plans, so programs emphasized vocational training, engineering education and immediately applicable work skills. Infrastructure investments such as highways, railroads, dams, bridges and agricultural and industrial machinery were still the most important priorities of development aid, but they needed skilled maintenance. Education aid was a way to make sure the necessary skills were locally available.

Keep reading for free!

Get instant access to the rest of this article by submitting your email address below. You'll also get access to three articles of your choice each month and our free newsletter:

Or, Subscribe now to get full access.

Already a subscriber? Log in here .

What you’ll get with an All-Access subscription to World Politics Review:

A WPR subscription is like no other resource — it’s like having a personal curator and expert analyst of global affairs news. Subscribe now, and you’ll get:

  • Immediate and instant access to the full searchable library of tens of thousands of articles.
  • Daily articles with original analysis, written by leading topic experts, delivered to you every weekday.
  • Regular in-depth articles with deep dives into important issues and countries.
  • The Daily Review email, with our take on the day’s most important news, the latest WPR analysis, what’s on our radar, and more.
  • The Weekly Review email, with quick summaries of the week’s most important coverage, and what’s to come.
  • Completely ad-free reading.

And all of this is available to you when you subscribe today.

More World Politics Review