ABSTRACT

If the common response of so many people to conditions of their own underemployment is to seek still more education, there must be some substantial bases for this response. This chapter looks critically at two of these bases:the widespread belief that jobs in the emerging future economy will require vastly increased numbers of highly educated workers; and the relationship between more education and increased earnings which is widely presumed to apply not only to individuals but to societies. Most of these prevalent theories of employment-related knowledge development are based at least loosely on notions of evolutionary progress. The chapter examines these claims more closely. Investment in formal education has been associated with both higher individual earnings and growing societal wealth. These relationships have been most fully conceptualized and documented by human capital theory which stresses the value of peoples' learning capacities as a factor of economic productivity.