The political diseconomy of educational expenditure: A commentary on Tilak

Abstract

The subject of this commentary is an article entitled ‘The political economy of investment in education in South Asia’ ( International Journal of Educational Development 4, 155–166). It is considered that the article raises important issues about the rationality, and political distortion, of educational expenditure in developing countries, but that the methods of analysis and type of data used do not effectively support the conclusions reached. It is argued that, to improve our understanding of the political factors affecting the relative size and quality of the various levels of education, a different type of research is needed.