| Abstract: | The difference in economic development among nations is entirely emanating from
difference in human capital development as it is the priority pathway out of poverty, diverse
socio-economic and environmental crises. Although huge investment in human capital
development has long been made, a mere cost of education will never lead to quality labor
force unless paths for quality education (be it internal or external to students) are well
substantiated. With this essence, this study was initiated with the objective of identifying
paths leading into and out of quality education. The data for the study were obtained from
sample of 150 students selected using multi-stage sampling. Factor analysis and path analysis
techniques were employed to identify components explaining the most for variation in
academic performance and to identify statistically significant paths leading into and out of
quality education, respectively. Accordingly, macroeconomic situations (unemployment),
student‘s learning-attitude, communication skill, curriculum teaching method, learning
facility and school-family background were found as statistically significant factors together
explaining 84% of the variation in students‘ academic performance. The path analysis result
reveals that learning facilities and macroeconomic situations are statistically significant and
have the largest share of determining quality education signifying calibration of educational
institutions with required facilities towards quality education. Evidently, a country expecting
fruitful returns from huge education investment has to do more for quality education at micro
level to produce quality labor force at macro level. Hence, a paradigm shifts from internal (at
students and institutions) - to external are needed. Specifically; ensuring cumulative grade
point average (CGPA) based employment than chance-based, equipping students morale with
entrepreneurship, fulfilling, learning, facilities, integratinggroup-learning-groupcommunication-
practicum,revising curriculum (abandoning simultaneous delivery of block
and parallel courses), assisting students from low-income or no family are necessary policy
interventions recognized as economical pathways to realize our quest for ―quality education
and quality labor force for economic development‖ fall policy interventions are
synergistically implemented with greater inter-sector integration from micro up to macro
levels. |
