The Economics of Education

Abstract

The second edition of the International Encyclopedia of Education is organised by themes and the present volume is dedicated to the issue of the economics of education. The word 'international' can be interpreted in different ways: first, it may mean that the content of the volume deals with educational issues worldwide. This is partly the case, but there is a strong bias in favour of developed countries, especially the US, and the space allocated to developing countries is not proportional to any demographic index, such as the entire population or the school population. Incidentally, one can observe that no mention is made of transition countries which have emerged after the splitting of the former Soviet Union. Russia does not appear in the subject index, nor any of the new nations of this part of the world. These biases reflect the uneven strengths of the research capacities in the different parts of the world, and the indisputable fact that the North American school, in the field of the economics of education, is by far the dominant driving force on the world scene. This remark leads to the second possible interpretation of the word 'international'. The Encyclopedia is maybe an attempt to mobilise the academic community active in this field in all parts of the world, more or less proportionally to their relative importance. From this perspective, it seems that the second edition is less open than the first, insofar that of the 87 entries included in the volume, only 22 (one fourth) have been written by economists not settled in the US. Of these 22, one-third is due to UK-based economists, only four entries to other Europeans and the rest to economists based in the rest of the world, with a significant proportion in Asia (another third). The US domination is significantly stronger in this edition than in the first, in which 'only' 60% of the entries were written by economists working in the US, 23% by UK-based economists, and 10% by other Europeans. This evolution illustrates the emergence of the Pacific Rim, which is the working place of the authors of about 40% of the entries (mostly thanks to the weight of California, which is the living place of the editor, Martin Carnoy, who is himself an active co-author, with no less than 16 entries). It can be remembered here that the first edition had been edited by George Psacharopoulos, who was himself of European origin, although based in the US-on the East side! Even recognising the domination of the US contribution in this domain, it is fair to say that this domination is better weighted in the first edition (60% of entries) than in the second (75%). And it is also correct to say that the European contribution to this field of research has been better recognised in the first edition (33%) than in the second (14%).