What Are the Relationships Between Corporate Training Expenditures, Private Education Spending, Published Academic Articles and GDP Changes over Time
Abstract
An analysis of the history of the evolution of education and its impact on economic development establishes the context and motivation for my primary research. The research inquiry is to determine if there is a measurable relationship between the three variables of training expenditures, private education spending, and academic publications with the dependent variable of GDP for various countries and globally. The analysis is followed by a discussion of future policy implications from the research, in order to create greater government investment in public education. The history of education demonstrated the random development of human learning from prehistoric times through the middle ages, culminating with the advent of public education in the late 1700s. Public education moved literacy from 12% in the world in 1820 to 86% of the world population by 2016 (Roser & Ortiz-Ospina, 2018). Buckminster Fuller (1981) in his book Critical Path estimated the growth in human knowledge. In the common era (CE) one unit of information took 1500 years to double. It is doubling every 13 months now (Miller, 2019). In addition, economic outcomes have gained tremendously. The world was at $1,102 per capita GDP in 1820 and was at $14,944 in 2017, an increase of over 13-fold (Roser, n.d.). Denison's research (Kerr, 1994) concludes that 20% of economic growth is contributed by education and 40% is contributed by advances in human knowledge. There is every reason to believe the growth in this trend will continue. The primary research inquiry focused on three variables. Denison's measurements were formal education, private education spending, and corporate on-the-job training (Kerr, 1994). Measures of knowledge were growth in academic publications, research and development, and patents. The literature review shows relationships between educational attainment and expenditures , R&D, and patents with economic outcomes. As far as could be ascertained, there is insufficient research on training, private education spending, publications, and its relationship to GDP. This is the focus of the research and analysis conducted. The discussion of the results of the research inquiry leads to policy arguments for funding education. The government in the United States has been characterized as divided in partisan politics. However, in 2021, a bipartisan Congress passed a $1 trillion dollar Infrastructure Bill to invest in the economic future of the country (World Economic Forum, 2021). When logical economic investment rationales are used to persuade both Democrats and Republicans of the importance of investing in the future competitiveness of the nation’s economy, then these arguments are shown to be the one approach that has been successful in getting unified support.
Subject Area
Education Policy|Educational administration|Education
Recommended Citation
Stapp, William Lex, "What Are the Relationships Between Corporate Training Expenditures, Private Education Spending, Published Academic Articles and GDP Changes over Time" (2023). ETD Collection for University of Texas, El Paso. AAI30522535.
https://scholarworks.utep.edu/dissertations/AAI30522535