Constant Economic Growth Research Articles

The Financing and Future of the Educational System of West Germany

Modern mass education is a product of the affluent society. A long period of educational expansion of historically unique proportions in West Germany could be financed only by means of a steady increase in wealth based on constant economic growth and the consequent increase in the proportion of the gross national product available for public spending. [1, p. 458] But with the onset of the economic recession in the 1970s, the growth of the gross national product and of the total state budget suffered, and the part available for financing the educational system diminished. It was not, however, just the economic and financial conditions which changed: the priorities and values attached to educational policy underwent a change too. With the decline of the economic boom came the decline of the boom in education. At the same time, abrupt changes in the development of the population structure produced demographic waves which created the totally new phenomenon of an educational system contracting at the lower lev...