ABSTRACT

The previous chapter has been concerned principally with the planning of the educational system to meet overall manpower needs.

The need for such planning rests on the inadequacy of market forces because of the long production period of educated manpower and the inflexibility and unreliability of largely institutionally determined earnings differentials. Consequently the planning was based on the analysis of industrial structure, on projections and on surveys. At a less aggregated level, there has been a certain amount of economic analysis of markets for various categories of scientific and technical manpower. Sometimes these studies have been done on a similar basis to the more aggregative studies already outlined, and sometimes they have been partly based on market data of earnings and other relevant variables. Two types of manpower are involved: (a) 'general' skills or qualifications such as chemists, physicists, engineers of various categories, which may be spread over several industries in various types of jobs (including general management); (b) 'specific' skills or qualifications such as teachers and doctors where certain levels of education are necessary conditions for easily defined categories of jobs — and where in many cases almost all those who qualify go into the relevant job. The present chapter is concerned principally with the more 'general' kinds of skills and qualifications. The following chapter, which analyses the supply of and demand for teachers will be concerned with an important category of 'special' qualification.