Economics of quality education and paths leading to quality education: Evidence from Debre Markos University

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.