The cost of instructional radio and television for developing countries

Abstract

Budgets constrain choices. They are not the only constraints; law, custom, tradition, political alignments, and inertia all serve to limit further a deci sion-maker's options. Nevertheless, budgets remain a central constraint. With his budget a Minister of Education can buy teachers, books, schoolhouses, radio sets, and the other inputs he needs to run his school system. The amount of each input that it is feasible for him to buy depends on the costs of the inputs and the level of his budget; his feasible alternatives constitute the set of all possible combinations of inputs whose total cost falls within the budget. In order to know which potential alternatives are feasible and which are not, the minister must assemble information on input costs. Our purpose in this paper is to assist in that task by bringing together available information on the cost of instructional radio and television and by devel oping a methodology for analyzing that information. To a lesser extent we discuss the costs of other new media. Obtaining costs in order to determine the set of economically feasible alternatives is the first step in educational planning, but it is only a first step. The Minister of Education must also obtain available information concerning the linkage between educational inputs and educational outputs and the linkage between educational outputs and economic and social outcomes. Cost—effectiveness analysis uses knowledge concerning the first linkage, between educational inputs and outputs, to help ascertain which of the feasible alternatives will result in the "maximum" educational output. (As