Economy and Education: Foundations of a General Theory

Abstract

It has become commonplace to acknowledge that there exists a close inter-dependence between educational and economic systems in advanced industrial societies. In what follows I intend to clarify the nature of this inter-dependence by modifying what has become a conventional view in sociology: that basically the relationship between the economy and education is one in which the needs of the economy for particular types of skills and knowledge call forth an appropriate response from the educational system. Few sociologists would claim that the economic system is the sole determinant of the form that an industrial society's educational institutions take. The additional influence of other factors such as ideological, religious, class, and political forces has been widely recognised. But it has become a conventional view that in industrial societies the influence of the economy upon the educational system is exceptionally strong and that as a result of this influence the educational system imparts to the future working population the types of knowledge andskills that the economy requires. Such a view of the relationship between education and the economy is developed by Dr. Banks in her textbook on the Sociology of Education.[1] She argues that in an industrial society 'an advanced technology can no longer depend upon traditional 'on the job' training. New and more complex skills require not only a literate work force but, in the higher echelons, a formal training in science and technology. At the same time the concomitant expansion in trade and commerce (gives) rise to a need for commercial skills at the practical and the more theoretical level'. [2] As a result 'skills at all levels of the occupational hierarchy are increasingly acquired within formal educational institutions'. [3] Banks proceeds to explain how an explosive expansion of the educational system is precipitated as opportunities that could previously be restricted to an elite have to be widened out of economic necessity, and how subjects relevant to the needs of an industrial economy become increasingly prominent in the educational process. Banks takes care to point out that she is not postulating a simple mechanistic relationship between the needs of the economy and the educational system. She recognises that other variables such as political and ideological factors can exercise considerable influence upon education, and can indeed explain why the extent to which economic needs are catered for by educational institutions varies between different industrial societies. But Banks maintains that in industrial societies there does exist a powerful and direct relationship between economic and educational systems in which the needs of the former become the goals of the latter. Banks is by no means alone in conceiving the relationship between education and the economy in these terms. Halsey [4] adopts a similar perspective in his examination of the changing functions of universities; Drucker [5] develops a similar approach; and in explaining the changes that took place