[Handbooks of Sociology and Social Research] Handbook of the Sociology of Education || Development and Education

CHAPTER 7

Development and Education COLETTE CHABBOTT

FRANCISCO O. RAMIREZ

INTRODUCTION

A positive relationship between education and economic, political, and cultural development is widely assumed throughout much of the modern and modernizing world, yet research suggests that this relationship is problematic. The problem has two aspects. First, although many empirical studies show a positive relationship between many forms of education and individual economic, political, and cultural development, the effects of education on development at the collective level are ambiguous. Second, at the same time evidence of this for ambiguity has been mounting, faith in education as the fulcrum for individual and for collective development has been growing in the form of international education conferences and declarations and national-level education policies.

This chapter explores two aspects of the problem in distinct ways. First, in the sections on the effects of education on development and the effects of development on education, we review the empirical relationship between education and development, drawing on several decades of cross-national studies. Second, in Section 4, we examine the way education as an instrument to attain national progress and justice has been produced and diffused via development discourse, development organizations, and development professionals. Although the types of education prescribed varied from one decade to another, throughout the post-World War II period, education for all became an increasingly important component in the global blueprint for development.

How did this blueprint come to be so widely disseminated? We suggest that two ration-

CoLETTE CHABBOTT • School of Education, Stanford University, Stanford, California 94305-3096. Present address: Board on International Comparative Studies in Education, National Academies of Science, Washington, DC 20007 FRANCISCO O. RAMIREZ • School of Education, Stanford University, Stanford, California 94305-3096. Handbook of the Sociology of Education, edited by Maureen T. Hallinan. Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers, New York, 2000.

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164 Colette Chabbott and Francisco O. Ramirez

ales played a major role in buttressing confidence in the relationship between education and national development. The first constructs education as an investment in human capital, which will increase the productivity of labor and contribute to economic growth and development at the societal level. This rationale is closely tied to global norms about science, progress, material well-being, and economic development. The second general rationale constructs education as a human right, imagining education as the prime mechanism for human beings to better themselves and to participate fully in the economy, politics, and culture of their societies. This rationale is tied to notions of justice, equality, and individual human rights.

Our assessment of the literature on education and development leads us to two general conclusions. First, there are many gray areas regarding the evidence on the links between development and education. Sweeping assertions regarding the positive or negative effects of one on the other miss the mark. This is slowly but steadily recognized in calls to move beyond the earlier either/or formulations and attempts to delineate the conditions under which links between development and education are most likely to occur (Fuller & Rubinson, 1992; Rubinson & Brown, 1994). Moreover, many current studies go beyond examining the reciprocal ties between educational expansion and increased wealth; all sorts of research issues regarding the quality of education and the quality of life itself are on the rise. The scope of the development and education literature has expanded.

However, the second general conclusion is that much confidence in the positive ties between education and development persists in the development practitioner literature and in public discourse about education and development. Sociological attention needs to be directed to the power of the taken-for-granted, that is, to the institutionalization of diffuse beliefs, practices, and routines regarding the links between development and education (Meyer, 1977). Attention also needs to be directed to the social effects of widely diffused, taken-for-granted notions about education and development. These effects include the proliferation and spread of development discourse, development organizations, and development professionals, all of which celebrate and promote expanded visions of education as human capital and as a human right (Chabbott, 1996). These visions have a significant impact on what educational statistics are collected, how development progress is measured, and what education policies nation-states are encouraged to adopt.

To reiterate, these two general conclusions constitute an interesting paradox: despite growing scholarly acknowledgment that our understanding of the link between education and development contains many gray areas, public confidence in these links, manifest in national policies and in international declarations, continues to mount. It is this paradox that motivates our review of the literature and our delineation of new research directions in the study of development and education.

EFFECTS OF EDUCATION ON DEVELOPMENT

This section examines the effects of education on economic, political, and cultural development. We assess evidence of both individual and societal level effects.

Economic Development

The impact of education on the economy is often studied by considering the effect of education on individual productivity or its influence on national economic growth. The idea that

Development and Education 165

increased exposure to school would increase productivity is at the heart of human capital theory. The pioneering work of Schultz (1963) suggested that the acquisition of more schooling involved more than mere enhanced consumption. Humans were increasingly investing in the development of their cognitive capacities and skills, and these investments, in the form of additional schooling attained, had payoffs both for them and for their societies. These investments were conceptualized as investments in human capital formation; today human capital is a pervasive feature of development discourse, a point to which we return in the third section. Much economic research focuses on the relationship between schooling and productivity at the individual level of analysis. It is to these studies that we now turn, before reviewing analyses at the societal level.

Almost from the outset of this research program, wages were used as a proxy for productivity (Denison, 1962). Given core economic assumptions about labor markets and the efficiency of resource allocation, the premise that more productive workers would be compensated with greater wages seemed plausible. These assumptions are consistent with the premises underlying the functionalist theory of social stratification. There are indeed many empirical studies showing the expected positive associations between schooling and wages in many different countries (Psacharopoulos & Woodhall, 1985; but see Lundgreen, 1976, for contrary evidence). Rate-of-return studies have become a staple of the economics of education, and more recently, of its application to research in less developed countries. Much of this research effort seeks to distinguish between the private and the social returns of different levels of schooling (primary v. higher education). Since the 1970s, Psacharopoulos (1973, 1989) has argued that the private and social returns are greater for primary education rather than for higher education and that this difference is greater in the less developed countries. More recent research, however, suggests that rates of return to tertiary education may be higher than rates for lower levels of education, particularly during sustained periods of industrialization (Carnoy, 1998; Ryoo, Nan, & Carnoy, 1993).

These generalizations have often lead to policy recommendations for less developed countries as to where investments in education would be most fruitful. As further studies called for more qualified generalizations, policy recommendations were altered or reversed (see discussion of discourse in "On Mechanisms for Diffusion"). For example, vocational schooling was recommended by donor organizations in the 1950s and 1960s and then the recommendation was scrapped, resulting in some serious costs to the client countries (Samoff, 1995).

Within this research tradition several studies have examined the effects of schooling on the productivity of women, comparing their wages with those of less educated women as well as with men with varying degrees of schooling. As is the case with the earlier studies of education and productivity among men, these relatively newer inquiries do not report identical results across countries. But here too some generalizations are warranted: as was the case with respect to men, there are private and social rates of return to women's schooling (Schultz, 1993). This is true in both the more developed and the less developed countries (Stromquist, 1989). In some countries the rate of social and/or private return to girls' schooling is actually greater than for boys' schooling. These findings have been emphasized in many government reports justifying investments in women's schooling, leading to a major push in the 1990s for girls' education projects in developing countries.

The dominant conceptualization and measurement of productivity in these studies has not gone unchallenged. Labor market economists have noted the degree to which schooling credentials may distort the market, thereby weakening the tie between productivity and wages (Carnoy, 1995; Knight & Sabot, 1987). To the extent that this is true, increased worldwide emphasis on formal schooling may increase the tendency to use formal degrees as certifica-


tion for those seeking jobs, thereby increasing individual returns to schooling without necessarily increasing individual productivity (Collins, 1971). Some empirical studies question any direct evidence of a positive schooling effect on productivity (Berg, 1970), but more recent research on farmer education and on farmer productivity yields positive results (Lockheed, Jamison, & Lau, 1988; see also Honig's [1996] study of education and profitability among Jamaican microentrepreneurs). The broader sociological critique is that simply expanding the number of individuals with more schooling does not necessarily result in an increase in more productive jobs (Collins, 1979). From this perspective schooling is primarily a sorting and allocating machine; schools are organizations of stratification, with the more credentialed outcompeting the less credentialed for the better paying jobs (Spring, 1972).

None of this implies that the more credentialed are necessarily more productive. When the society is conceptualized as a more closed system, the process is imagined as a simple reproduction of the hierarchical order, as social elites are more able to secure educational advantages for their children (Bowles & Gintis, 1976; but see Olneck & Bills, 1980). When a more open society is imagined, much intense competition and conflict ensues between social classes, between ethnic and religious groups, and more recently between women and men. None of this, however, was hypothesized to lead to increased productivity. The credential society was not to be confused with a more productive one (Collins, 1979). Thus, the optimism of an earlier era gave way to more skeptical and more critical outlooks in the sociology of development and education. This change in tone was even more pronounced when examining the effects of education on political and cultural development, a point emphasized later in this chapter.

A more recent appraisal of the literature makes explicit a methodological point implied in some of the earlier critiques and offers a fresh reformulation of the central question. The methodological point is a straightforward levels-of-analysis point: even if it were established that more schooling resulted in greater individual productivity, effects of schooling on productivity at the individual level do not necessarily lead to economic growth at the societal level. To arrive at the latter inference, one needs to compare societies, not individuals (see the papers in Meyer & Hannan, 1979). The brain drain literature partially suggests what happens to societies that have not been able to create more productive jobs for their more productive workers. The substantive reformulations call for the identification of the conditions under which educational expansion leads to economic growth (Fuller & Rubinson, 1992; Hanushek & Kim, 1996). In what follows we first examine cross-national studies of the influence of educational expansion on economic growth and then we turn to studies that specify the effects of some forms of schooling.

The study of Harbison and Meyers (1964) was among the first to undertake cross-national efforts in this domain. This study reported a positive association between a country's level of educational enrollments and economic wealth and emphasized the stronger economic effect of secondary education. Because the study relied on a cross-sectional design it could not ascertain the direction of causality, thereby raising the chicken and egg question: does economic development lead to educational expansion, or vice versa (Anderson & Bowman, 1976)? Moreover, earlier research was often bivariate in character or did not include a sufficient number of reasonable control variables in the analyses. In the 1980s and the 1990s, however, cross-national researchers have attacked this issue utilizing multivariate analyses of panel data. These studies show that primary and secondary schooling have stronger effects on economic development than higher education (Benavot, 1992b; Meyer & Hannan, 1979). Moreover, the economic effects of expanded schooling seemed stronger for poorer countries. Interestingly enough this generalization is consistent with the main inference in Harbison and Meyers emphasizing the weaker economic effect of higher education. A similar conclusion is


drawn by researchers undertaking a time series analysis of the economic consequences of the expansion of higher education in the United States (Walters & Rubinson, 1983).

In these analyses the independent variables of interest do not distinguish between types of schooling or curricula or between the different populations undergoing greater schooling. If some types of schooling more directly contribute to economic growth than other types, isolating their effects requires more refined measures than simple statistics estimating secondary or tertiary enrollments as a percent of the typical age cohort for this level of schooling. Working with different research designs and methods of analysis, several studies suggest a common and positive economic outcome of more scientific and technical forms of schooling. Focusing on lower levels of schooling in both France and Germany, some studies indicate that the expansion of more technical tracks had distinctive positive effects not found in the growth of the more classical tracks (Gamier & Hage, 1990; Garnier, Hage, & Fuller, 1989; Hage & Gamier, 1990; 1992). The researchers reasoned that the skills learned in these tracks were more relevant to the needs of the economy than the greater emphasis on high culture in the classical tracks. Another study examined the effects of varying curricular emphases in primary education on economic development. This analysis shows that, net of other influences, a stronger emphasis on science in the curriculum positively influences economic development (Benavot, 1992a). Shifting from lower levels of schooling to higher education, other cross-national investigations focused on the influence of different fields of study in higher education on the economy. The key cross-national finding is that greater enrollments in science and engineering positively influence economic development (Ramirez & Lee, 1995; Schofer, Ramirez, & Meyer, 1997).

Taken as a whole these findings suggest the plausibility of knowledge claims linking scientization in education and the growth of the economy. However, much more research is needed to test the implications of the general claim. Note, for example, that a time series analysis of the economic effect of science and engineering graduates in the United States failed to find a significant impact (Walters & O'Doimell, 1990). Furthermore, Schofer and associates (1997) found that some aspects of prestigious science activities, such as research and patents, have a negative economic effect. Finally, although many of these studies did not include a significant number of developing countries, they are sometimes used to justify fairly explicit policy recommendations for developing countries from international development organizations (described in "On Translating International Development into Educational Discourse").

A second direction in this domain disaggregates the educational effects by gender. Benavot (1989), for example, shows that women's share of secondary education positively influences the economy whereas the female tertiary enrollment variable fails to do so. Further studies may estimate the effects of female and male enrollments in different fields in higher education. This research direction would integrate the growing interest in isolating science effects with the expanding focus on gender-related outcomes. A recent cross-national study of science education at the secondary level concluded that girls do not necessarily have a predisposition against science. The participation and achievement of girls in secondary science varies widely between countries (Caillods, Gottelmann-Duret, & Lewin, 1996; a similar finding for math achievement is reported in Baker & Jones, 1993).

Political Development

The same optimism regarding the economic benefits of expanded schooling also led to an emphasis on political gains. One major line of inquiry focused on the effects of schooling on


the political knowledge, values, and attitudes of individuals. Studies of the political socialization effects of education reflect this research tradition. A more macrosociological approach directly examined the effects of education on political democracy and on national integration. At both the individual and societal levels of analysis, the initial work seemed to be grounded in a much greater confidence in the transformative powers of schooling than later studies.

A major generalization from the political socialization literature is that individuals with more schooling were more likely to know more about their political systems and to have more positive political values and attitudes. The latter were often defined as participatory, democratic, and tolerant values and attitudes. Comparative studies of political socialization include the pioneering work of Almond and Verba (1963) as well as that of Tomey and Hess (1969). Some studies compared adults with varying levels of schooling whereas others compared children in different national contexts exposed to different curricula (see, for example, Tomey's (1976) cross-national study of civics education). The underlying assumption was that in democratic societies schools were instruments of democracy and more schooling thus led to more democratic outlooks and practices. Just exactly how schools accomplished this goal was unclear, with some arguments emphasizing curriculum and teachers as organizational resources, whereas broader sociological accounts stressed the citizenship-conferring character of the school as an institution (Dreeben, 1968; Meyer, 1977).

This political socialization research direction continues in the form of the current and ongoing second international study of civic education and also in comparative case studies of education, democracy, and human rights, such as Starkey (1991). Many of the new democracies seem especially interested in understanding how schools can shape democratic orientations. However, more recent studies raise questions about earlier generalizations. Weil (1985), for example, showed that the link between schooling attained and political tolerance varies across countries. In countries with a more authoritarian legacy or regime, better educated people are not more politically tolerant. This kind of finding suggests that in this domain of inquiry, one should also eschew unqualified generalizations. The political context within which schools operate may be an important contingency in ascertaining the relationship between education and politically democratic beliefs and values.

These studies raise some of the same issues of conceptualization and measurement as those earlier mentioned with respect to schooling and productivity. The reliance on paper-and-pencil tests as assessments of democratic orientations can be challenged; perhaps more educated actors are better prepared to figure out the correct responses and therefore inflate their scores. This criticism, however, begs the question as to why the more educated are better able to ascertain the more normatively acceptable political response.

Even if we did accept the face validity of the earlier findings, the levels-of-analysis argument made earlier with respect to schooling and economic development applies here, too. That is, one cannot infer the positive effects of expanded education on political democracy on the basis of individual data on schooling and values. The impact of education on the systemic rules of the game that constitute political democracy need to be directly studied, not inferred from individual-level data.

Much comparative theorizing argued or presupposed that an educated citizenry was essential for the establishment and maintenance of a political democracy. In this context the United States was often invoked as a country that both expanded schooling and political democracy relatively early in its history (Lipset, 1963). Comparative evidence supporting this generalization was found for both more developed (Cutright, 1969) and less developed countries (Adelman & Morris, 1973). These and other studies typically employed cross-sectional research designs, raising the same set of issues generated in response to the early work on


education and economic development. Using the same indicators of political democracy earlier analyzed but extending these measures over time, one study showed that participation in lower levels of schooling (but not in higher education) positively affected political democracy (Ramirez, Rubinson, & Meyer, 1973). However, a more recent study with more and better measures of political democracy found significant effects of higher education (Benavot, 1992b). This study also shows that the effects of education vary across time periods, further suggesting the more conditional character of the relationship between educational expansion and political democracy.

Other studies have focused on political order and national integration. Some scholars feared that a bloated system of higher education would result in political instability; cross-national analyses showed no such effects (Gurr, 1971). There is also no evidence that educational expansion influences the type of political regime in a country (Thomas, Ramirez, Meyer, & Gobbalet, 1979). A more qualitative assessment of the role of education in promoting national integration in Malaysia concluded that education has failed to bolster national integration (Singh & Mukherjee, 1993), in stark contrast with the enormous faith placed in the nation-building potential of education in the 1950s and 1960s (see the papers in Coleman, 1965).

Cultural Development

Though closely related to studies of both economic and political development, modernization theory and research also focused on forms of personal development that were related to cultural development. Modernization theorists drew on Parson's (1957) theories of structural differentiation to explain how institutions multiply and the simple structures of traditional society become more complex in response to changes in technology and/or values. For most of these theorists, modernization was roughly equivalent to Westernization.

McClelland (1961), for example, argued that child-rearing practices tied to Western notions of individualism and progress give rise to a greater number of individuals with high levels of need achievement, which in turn produce an achieving society, driven by the need to achieve ever higher levels of output and productivity. These child-rearing practices and similar efforts in school lead to the formation of personal modernity, a condition characterized by a high sense of optimism, efficacy, and self-direction (Inkeles & Sirowy, 1983; Inkeles & Smith, 1974). Several case studies sought to document the passing of traditional society in part as a function of expanded schooling. More recent work examining the effect of varying types of educational experiences on personal modemity among Algerian students shows that more modem orientations are positively influenced both by instruction in French and by field of study, with science students exhibiting more modem outlooks than those in the humanities (Coffman, 1992). This study suggests that not all educational experiences may have the same modernization consequences. Whereas literacy may be in some generic sense modernizing, it may also be compatible with personal orientations quite different from those depicted by the theory.

Whether modernization could be distinguished from Westernization was a recurring issue in this literature. Just as there were those who argued that there were multiple paths to economic development, some researchers contended that there were diverse personal orientations and institutional arrangements compatible with undertaking modernization. Additionally, just as a causal link between more schooling and both more productive and more democratic individuals did not necessarily add up to economic growth and political democracy, respectively, so too a tie between expanded education and more modem persons would not suffice to justify causal inferences at the societal level. Cross-national comparisons at the


societal level were needed. The literature contains early efforts to conceptualize societal modernization and the contribution of schooling to societal modernization (Black, 1967; Eisenstadt, 1963). However, the concept proved to be more complex than either economic development or political democracy. Few studies more attempted directly assess the impact of education on societal modernity.

One obvious avenue of research involves the influence of education on inequality, because part of what it means to be a modern society is to be a more open and, thus presumably, a more egalitarian society. Despite a plethora of cross-national studies on income inequality, little work has examined whether there is less income inequality in countries with more expanded education. One unpublished study suggests no effects (Shanahan, 1994); this finding is consistent with more structural theories of social inequality (Boudon, 1974). Little work has directly examined the influence of education on other forms of inequality; for example, between women and men. At the individual level of analysis, one study shows that more educated people are not necessarily more supportive of government efforts to reduce inequality between men and women (Davis & Robinson, 1991). More societal-level analyses indicate that the expansion of women's share of higher education positively influences their share of the paid labor force (Weiss, Ramirez, & Tracy, 1976). It is often assumed that women's expanded access to education will have broad, positive development effects, but much more research in this area is needed.

Summary

At the individual level of analysis, we find evidence that schooling positively influences wages but debate continues on whether wages are an adequate measure of productivity. There is also support for the hypothesis that more educated individuals are more politically active, though the effects of schooling on political tolerance are more variable. Lastly, more schooled individuals exhibit some values in line with modernization theory, but whether this is simply evidence of greater Westernization in general remains unsettled.

None of these findings, however, warrant societal-level inferences. Direct cross-national comparisons have increasingly been undertaken. Whereas earlier work emphasized global educational effects, more recent studies distinguish between the effects of different types of schooling and those brought about by different kinds of populations undertaking education. There is partial support for arguments emphasizing the economic benefits of expanded schooling, especially more technical forms. In contrast, the political or cultural consequences of educational expansion and the educational source of political or cultural development remain to be explored.

EFFECTS OF DEVELOPMENT ON EDUCATION

The chicken and egg question regarding the relationship between education and economic development also applies to the ways in which education affects political and cultural development. Perhaps education is more a consequence of economic, political, and cultural development rather than its cause, or perhaps causation is reciprocal. Much of this literature directly operates at the societal level, with the expansion of the educational system as a main dependent variable. More recent studies focus on specific aspects of the educational system, such as curricular emphases or specific fields of study, or on the access and attainment of


specific populations, such as women. In wliat follows we focus primarily on these cross-national studies.

Some of the literature focuses on the rise and expansion of mass schooling whereas other studies deal with the formation and growth of higher education. Links between schooling and market forces and between schooling and the state have also been analyzed in this research tradition. This review first considers studies of mass schooling, then turns to research on higher education. We cover only studies in which educational outcomes are examined as a function of development variables.

Mass Schooling

Historians and sociologists increasingly recognize that the rise of mass schooling cannot be adequately accounted for as an outcome of industrialization (Maynes, 1985; Ramirez, 1997). This general observation is well illustrated in a case study of the rise of mass schooling in Sweden, a study that reveals the compatibility of mass schooling with a preindustrial economic base (Boli, 1989). Despite the popularity of both more conservative and more radical variants of logic of industrialization arguments, historical evidence fails to support the favored causal claim that mass schooling arose as a function of economic development. Nor is it the case that the expansion of primary school enrollments is mainly driven by economic development. Cross-national multivariate analysis of panel data shows that much primary enrollment growth is unrelated to various measures of economic development (Meyer, Ramirez, Rubinson, & Boli-Bennett, 1977; Meyer, Ramirez, & Soysal, 1992). Throughout the 20th century mass schooling has expanded in more developed and in less developed countries.

An alternate set of claims revolves around political factors. Historians and sociologists have linked the rise of mass schooling to the rise of the nation-state (Bendix, 1964; Reisner, 1927). Mass schooling for the production of loyal citizens is indeed a theme in the rise of mass schooling. However, there is no evidence that the more integrated nation-states were the ones that early on launched mass schooling (and as noted in the prior section, the success of mass schooling in promoting national integration has been challenged). Nor is a simple democratic story plausible, as mass schooling emerged in both more democratic and more authoritarian regimes in North America and in Western Europe in comparable time periods (Ramirez & Boli, 1987). The aforementioned cross-national analyses of primary educational expansion also failed to show convincing political and societal modernization effects.

In the post-World War II era the commitment to expand mass schooling cuts across all sorts of national boundaries and socioeconomic formations. The mixed evidence notwithstanding, there is much official and popular confidence in the transformative powers of schooling. There is also much worldwide consensus on the right of all to schooling. The erosion of primary enrollments in this country or in that region can thus be discussed as both an economic and a moral crisis (Fuller & Heyneman, 1989), a crisis that increasingly commands the attention of both national authorities and transnational organizations. This point is re-examined in the section on translating international development into educational discourse.

These findings may be interpreted along more historicist accounts of the rise of mass schooling (see, for example, many of the chapters in Mangan, 1994) or, alternately, from more generalizing sociological perspectives that emphasize the role of transnational forces. The historical approach suggests that, via multiple paths, different economies, polities, and civil societies converged on the value of expanding mass schooling. In contrast, macrosociologists have postulated that a single model of progress and justice formulated at the world level


contributes to commonalities in mass schooling outcomes in otherwise diverse societies. The influence of these models triggered education as a nation-building project, quite apart from its actual impact on nation building and on related development activities. In some societies, though, the nation was more directly managed by the state whereas in others nation building involved social movements loosely coupled to the state bureaucracy.

In the 18th and 19th centuries the role of education within these emerging models was much more modest than its present status. Schooling for the masses literally started as schooling for differentiated and subordinated strata, but increasingly schools were imagined as beacons of progress and as pillars of the republic. This elevated view of schooling emerged even as nation-states themselves emerged as imagined, progress-seeking communities of solidarity (Anderson, 1991). By the late 19th century one could assert that the Franco-Prussian War had been won by the Prussian schoolmaster. Throughout the 20th century the putative links between schooling and development grew, less as a function of varying levels of societal development and more as an outcome of the common articulation of world development blueprints (Ramirez, 1997). Later we address the mechanisms through which world development blueprints are established and disseminated.

More recent studies have examined the impact of varying levels of development on cur-ricular content and emphases (Kamens, Meyer, & Benavot, 1996). These studies show surprisingly similar trends in curricular development, trends that seem unrelated to the requirements of local economic or political structures or to the interests of local masses or elites (see the chapter by McEneaney and Meyer in this volume for a review of this literature.) Other cross-national research has focused on the changing trends in curricular requirements for girls and for boys in primary and secondary schooling, trends that suggest gender de-differentiation (Ramirez & Cha, 1990). This study also suggests that the growth of mass schooling involved expanding schooling for both boys and girls.

Higher Education

Earlier case studies of the development of higher education focused on cross-national organizational and institutional differences and sought to explain these differences (Clark, 1977a, 1977b). In these and in related cross-national studies, variations in levels of political centralization account for variations in the degree to which higher education is regulated by state authorities (Ramirez & Rubinson, 1979). Variations in academic governance structures have also been examined as a function of both market forces and state legacies. In this tradition a recent comparative study concluded that systems that strongly differentiate at the secondary level are more likely to have lower degrees of differentiation at the higher level (e.g., Germany) than those with relatively low levels of secondary school differentiation (e.g., the United States, Windolf, 1997). This analysis also suggests that the response of higher education expansion to market forces (business cycles) will be greater in societies where markets are more influential than state bureaucracies, moreso in the United States than in Germany.

The expansion of higher education has not always been regarded as evidence of progress. Not only was there greater skepticism regarding its positive effects, the elite character of higher education was taken for granted until well after World War II. Increasingly, higher education has become nearly a mass institution in some countries, whereas in others the aspiration to turn higher education into a more mass-friendly setting is evident. There is little evidence that the expansion of higher education is mainly a function of the level of economic growth; there is much evidence that the expansion of women's share of higher education is a


worldwide trend (Kelly, 1991). In less developed countries the newness of the system of higher education positively influences the growth of women's share, a process that suggests that the age of a country influences its receptivity to changing world emphases on who should enter into higher education (Bradley & Ramirez, 1996).

There is also evidence that the content of higher education is becoming more diversified and more present-oriented in its coverage. Despite their distinctive historical legacies and thick cultural milieus, more universities and especially the many newer ones seem more connected to both mass schooling institutions and to broad development concerns than in prior eras (Frank, Wong, Meyer, & Duncan, 1996). Perhaps it is true that more peoples and more societies are organizing themselves as if there were "no salvation outside higher education" (Shils, 1971). This may explain some of the internal opposition to external pressures to curb the growth of costly higher education or to defray some of the costs with user fees and tuition. These pressures are often applied by the World Bank as part of programs to rationalize resource allocations in the education sector.

Summary

The emergence and expansion of mass schooling is difficult to account for as a function of national or societal properties, such as the level of development. The extent to which schooling is more directly linked to state bureaucracies or more open to market forces varies in large part as a consequence of how much society itself is market- or state-driven. However, the worldwide character of the expansion and the universalistic nature of the rationale for expansion suggests that external factors play a significant role.

We find more cross-national variation in the internal organization of higher education, but here too the historical trend is in the direction of greater massification. Thus, massification of both basic schooling and higher education in the 20th century appear to be attuned to transnational blueprints for promoting development through education. Individual-level demands for more schooling are on the rise, with issues of gender commanding greater attention than in past decades. Increasingly the core debates hinge on what constitutes quality education, which is increasingly construed as the key to development.

We are left with our paradox: to date, empirical research has been unable to establish universal causal links between education writ large and development, especially at the societal level of analysis. Nevertheless, by the end of the 20th century, common blueprints of education for development appear in many international education declarations and covenants, as well as in national strategies and policies. The next section focuses on the mechanisms through which these blueprints have been produced and diffused throughout the world.

MECHANISMS FOR DIFFUSION

In the post-World War II era, common blueprints emphasizing education for development have emerged and have been rapidly disseminated. The result has been an increase in common educational principles, policies, and even practices among countries with varying national characteristics. Attempts to explain the growth of educational isomorphism* have empha-

*The term isomorphism means tlie tendency for collectivities engaged in similar enrterprises to adopt similar social structures (DiMaggio & Powell, 1983).


sized coercion, imitation, and conformity to norms (Herman, 1983, 1997; Meyer, Nagel, & Snyder, 1993). Missing from most of this literature is an analysis of the mechanisms that generate this isomorphism. This section addresses this gap in the following four subsections. First, we trace the translation of abstract, rarified ideas about progress and justice into rational discourse about education and development at the global level. Second, we describe the formalization of that discourse into international development organizations. Finally, we look at the role of international development professionals in institutionalizing and modifying that discourse about education and development.

Figure 7.1 outUnes our argument, starting from the premise that world ideas about progress and justice translate into discourse about development and, more specifically, about education and development. This rationalizing discourse facilitates the rise of both networks of development professionals and international development organizations. These professionals and or-

WORLD CULTURAL BLUEPRINTS OF DEVELOPMENT

I INTERNATIONAL , 4 ^ INTERNATIONAL . ^ ^ INTERNATIONAL DISCOURSE ORGANIZATIONS PROFESSIONALS

\ INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCES

I INTERNATIONAL

DECLARATIONS, CONVENTIONS & FRAMEWORKS FOR ACTION

t NA: .NS

t NATIONAL

PLANS OF ACTION

NATIONAL EXPANDED DEFINmONS OF

HUMAN RIGHTS, CITIZENSHIP, & DEVELOPMENT

NATIONAL/LOCAL SOCIAL MOVEMENTS

NATIONAL/LOCAL NGOs

LOCAL/NATIONAL ACTION UNDERTAKEN CONSISTENT WITH EXPANDED DEFINITIONS OF

HUMAN RIGHTS, CITIZENSHIP, & DEVELOPMEN

FIGURE 7.1. Mechanisms for carrying blueprints of development and education.


ganizations, in turn, sharpen and standardize the discourse by coordinating activities that showcase discourse. International conferences are one example of these types of activities; between 1944 and 1990, various United Nations organizations sponsored more than 16 global conferences on specific areas of development, such as family planning, water and sanitation, and food. Each of these conferences brought together not just national delegations but also scores of international development organizations.

By the time of the first Education for All Conference in 1990, standard products of these conferences included nonbinding declarations and frameworks for action. These declarations and their associated frameworks typically invoke the highest ideals of progress and justice, thereby making it practically mandatory for national delegations to endorse them. Given the prominent role played by ideals in both the declaration and framework for action, the national plans developed subsequent to the conference often incorporate expanded definitions of human rights, citizenship, and development.

For most of the postwar period this conference-declaration-national plan cycle contributed to a significant amount of loose coupling (Meyer et al., 1993; Nagel & Snyder, 1989) between on the one hand, national education policies produced in response to international norms and, on the other hand, the implementation of these policies at the subnational level. In recent years, however, the governmental international development organizations have increasingly recruited and supported the participation of international, national, and local nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in international conferences. They also support NGO efforts to monitor the implementation of declarations and national plans of action at the national and the local levels. With the advent of new, inexpensive electronic communications, local NGOs can publicize national plans at the national and the local level and can draw international attention when national governments fail to implement those plans (see, for example. Social Watch, 1996). Fisher (1998) suggested that this may lead to tighter coupling between international norms and action at the subnational level.

The following subsections describe the process shown in Figure 7.1 in greater detail as it relates to education and development. Note that most arrows in Figure 7.1 are two way, indicating that these nodes are reciprocal and iterative. In general, over time, links between education and development grow tighter and more institutionalized; the meaning of development and, by extension, of education broadens; and emphasis shifts from an exclusive concern with collective economic growth to incorporate individual rights and justice.

Expanding Discourse and Organizations

Since the end of World War II, a world culture emphasizing progress and justice (Fagerlind & Saha, 1983; Meyer, Poll, Thomas, & Ramirez, 1997; Robertson, 1992) produced a rationalizing discourse about development, and, over time, constructed a central role for education in the development process. The most legitimate actors became nation-states with broad national and individual development goals and with individual citizens whose education was linked to their development and the development of their nation-state.

An expanded definition of development derives from the United Nations' (UN) 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (United Nations, 1948). The Declaration makes explicit each individual's rights to a minimum standard of living but does not specify how that standard will be ensured: "Article 25, Para 1. Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well being of himself (sic) and of his family, including food, clothing, housing, and medical care and necessary social services. . . ."


Later efforts, however, to translate the nonbinding 1948 Declaration into binding international covenants led to further elaboration of the imperative for states to provide for individual development and of the wealthier states to provide assistance to poorer states to help them fulfill this responsibility.

Article 11, Para 1. The States Parties to the present Covenant recognize the right of everyone to an adequate standard of living . . . and to the continuous improvement of living conditions. The States Parties will take appropriate steps to ensure the realization of this right, recognizing to this effect the essential importance of international co-operation based on free consent. (United Nations, 1966)

These documents helped to create a world of developed and developing countries, with the former encouraged to provide the latter with foreign aid or development assistance. Originally, multilateral organizations, such as the UN, expected to be the main conduits of this development assistance. The advent of the Cold War, however, circumvented the UN's coordinating mandate (Black, 1986); by the 1950s, many Western countries began channeling development assistance through primarily religious organizations and through NGOs already established in former colonies, a practice that has grown over time (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, 1988). In addition, in the 1960s and 1970s, most high-income countries also formed bilateral governmental development organizations. As a result, by the early 1990s, there were about 250 multilateral, 40 bilateral, and 5,000 international nongovernmental development organizations (Chabbott, 1996). Over time, as their density increased, these organizations became increasingly bureaucratized and professionalized. Although initially focused on sectors immediately associated with economic production (such as agriculture or infrastructure), international development organizations eventually broadened into all social and economic sectors, including education.

In addition, both of the documents excerpted previously emphasize that the target of development is not the national economy—the traditional "wealth of nations"—but everyone. Individual development became the means to national development and individual development was equated with individual education in many UN documents. The best known of these include Article 26 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (United Nations, 1948), which defines education as a human right, and Articles 13 and 14 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (United Nations, 1966), which expands on this theme. In 1990 more than 150 nations accepted by acclamation the Declaration of Education for All, reiterating these rights and consequences and reaffirming their belief in the relationship between development and education at the global, national, and individual levels:

1. Recalling that education is a fundamental right. . . ; 2. Understanding that education can help ensure a safer, healthier, more prosperous and

environmentally sound world, while simultaneously contributing to social, economic, and cultural progress, tolerance, and international cooperation;

3. Knowing that education is an indispensable key to, though not a sufficient condition for, personal and social improvement... UNESCO 1993)

Note that this passage sets out both normative (education as a right) and instrumental (education as an essential input to development) arguments to promote education. For most of the postwar period, instrumental arguments, often drawing on human capital constructs (Schultz, 1963), dominated liberal organizations (i.e., the World Bank, USAID). In contrast, normative arguments tended to prevail among more progressive funders (i.e., the UN agencies, the Nordic bilateral organizations; Buchert, 1994)

Finally, the universalistic focus in the development discourse, that is, everyone, increased emphasis within international development agencies on individual welfare and on broad par-


ticipation in the development process. By the late 1980s, this translated into an increasing focus on previously marginalized groups, such as ethnic minorities and women. Education became a central theme in efforts to raise these groups to a higher status.

In summary, we have described the mechanism by which discourse at the global level about the nature of development simultaneously prompted the expansion of discourse about education and development, the formation of international development organizations, and the proliferation of activities to promote it, such as international conferences. The next section examines the evolution of the content of discourse about education in the context of shifting discourse about development. Whereas in this section, development discourse facilitated the creation of a field of international development organizations, in the next we show how, once created, these organizations generate secondary discourse that results in an emphasis on different levels and types of education in different decades.

Translating International Development into Educational Discourse

Since the end of World War 11, institutionalized discourse on development within the UN justified the formation of dozens of formal UN-affiliated organizations with the express purpose of operationalizing the UN's Charter, Declaration, and Covenants. The UN's commitment to promoting education as a human right was manifest in the relatively early creation of the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO, f. 1946). Jones (1990) emphasized the importance of the objective, material needs of the Allies to rebuild education systems shattered by World War II in establishing UNESCO as an action-oriented organization. An emphasis on psychology and on international peace was deeply embedded in UNESCO, which popularized Clement Atlee's notion that "wars begin in the minds of men." Illiteracy—or the lack of exposure to the socializing influence of schooling— was therefore constructed as a threat to peace (Jones, 1990). In addition, UNESCO's early education approaches, such as fundamental education, assumed a causal link between education and development. Margaret Mead, one of a series of social scientists and humanitarians called upon to help UNESCO define its mission, declared:

The task of Fundamental Education is to cover the whole of living. In addition, it is to teach, not only new ways, but the need and the incentive for new ways . . . if the new education is to fill the place of the old, it has to cover all areas of living . . . In many countries new fundamental education is carried on by teams including social workers, graduate nurses, agricultural assistants, home economists, hygiene experts, (quoted in Jones, 1990)

UNESCO's mandate envisions the organization as the main conduit for much development assistance. Like other UN organizations, UNESCO suffered a major setback with the advent of the Cold War. Since then, many bilateral organizations, and even some other UN organizations, created education sections. In addition, several other intergovernmental organizations specializing in educational development emerged, such as the International Institute for Educational Planning (HEP, f. 1963; see King, 1991 for a more complete catalog of international educational development organizations). Although UNESCO tried from time to time to mount ambitious global level programs, such as the World Literacy Program, its main contribution to educational development became reports, pilot projects, and conferences (Jones, 1990).

Many factors contributed to the rise of what Cox (1968) called the ideology of educational development. UNESCO's regional conferences helped to create common vocabulary and goals. A group of American economists (Becker, 1964; Schultz, 1963) provided the ratio-


nal link between education and development in the form of human capital theory. U.S. foundations supported both economic research and expanded support for the study of education and development in other countries (Berman, 1992). Finally, international development organizations expanded their education departments, promoted specific education policies and projects, and funded new educational and research networks in developing countries (McGinn, 1996).

The education policies promoted by the international development organizations, however, do not necessarily derive from the educational research described in earlier sections, rather they tend to mirror the shifting ideas about national development (Berman, 1997; Coombs, 1985; Watson, 1988). Table 7.1 is a simplified mapping of the major approaches to national development in the decades since World War II, as articulated in the mainstream practitioner literature (Arndt, 1987; J. Lewis & Kallab, 1986; J. P. Lewis, 1988; Meier, 1995). Alongside these development approaches, we show the corresponding discourse about educational development and the educational priorities associated with this discourse (P. Jones, 1997; P. W. Jones, 1990, 1992). To emphasize the overlapping quality of many of these ideas, the lines demarcating decades are dashed, not solid.

Although there is much overlap in these decades, trends are evident. First, the concept of development shifts from national control and orientation to international funding and global orientation. Second, we see increasing complexity in the way the process of development is imagined, with newer approaches subordinating but not entirely replacing older ones. But, most important, we see national development increasingly defined in terms of individual welfare, rather than simply in terms of national economic growth and, concurrently, a push to use

TABLE 7.1. Themes in National Development and Educational Development Discourse, 1950-1995

Decade Development discourse Educational development discourse Educational priorities

1950s Community development Technology transfer

Comprehensive national planning

Industrialization

Fundamental education (1949-1955) Rural extension training Functional education Adult literacy for health &

agriculture Manpower planning Universal primary education

1960s Modernization

Economic growth Dependency

1970s Basic human needs Growth with equity

Integrated rural development New International Economic

Order

Human capital theory

Manpower planning Functional education

Formal secondary and higher schooling

Technical and vocational training Vocationally oriented literacy

Formal primary schools Nonformal education for youth

and adults Literacy education Adult/lifelong learning

Basic education Equalizing educational opportunity

Teaching "neglected groups" Pedagogy of the oppressed

1980s Poverty reduction

Structural adjustment

Human resources development

Educational efficiency and effectiveness

Quality learning

Formal primary and secondary schools

Education administration and finance

1990s Sustainable human development

Poverty alleviation Social dimensions of

adjustment

Meeting basic learning needs

Quality learning Girls' education

Universal formal primary and secondary schools

Quality of classroom teaching and curriculum


universal access to primary education as a key measure of both individual welfare and national development. This rationalization—that individual welfare, particularly individual access to quality education is at the very center of development—creates the foundation on which to build broader, normative arguments for education and for development.

Beginning in the second row of Table 7.1, the comprehensive economic development planning approach promoted in the 1950s by a variety of governments and international donor organizations assumed that each nation-state was a relatively autonomous, self-contained unit. Prudent management of domestic resources was the supposed determinant of national development, and it might be achieved with little help from the outside world. During this decade, UNESCO implemented fundamental and later functional education programs, introducing literacy as a part of a broad approach to community development. Universal primary education was assumed to be a low-cost activity that required locally trained teachers and no scarce foreign exchange.

In the 1960s, rapid economic growth became prerequisite to development, still promoted by central planning. Educational planners urged developing countries to focus their limited budgets on formal secondary and higher schooling in subjects related to industrialization. Technical and vocational training also received support, as well as vocationally oriented literacy. Education was rarely mentioned as a right, but rather as instrumental to industrial development.

In the 1970s, as some speculated that economic growth was increasing, rather than decreasing the ranks of the impoverished in many countries, the concept of development was expanded to include social as well as economic aspects. During this decade, basic human needs emerged, along with the idea that the international community had a responsibility to meet these needs in nation-states where weak economies and administrative infrastructure rendered it impossible for national governments to do so. Some more radical analyses extended the responsibilities of the international community even further, suggesting that a New International Economic Order might be necessary to address chronic social and economic imbalances at the world level that favored the rich countries and maintained the economic disadvantages of the poorer ones.

In this context, a basic education, capable of equipping both adults and children to participate more fully in their societies, became the focus of development agency attention. Education was the way to equalize economic opportunity and to incorporate previously neglected groups. Along with formal primary schools, UNESCO in the 1970s emphasized adult literacy and lifelong education, and various international development organizations explored the potential of nonformal, that is, out-of-school, education.

In the 1980s, structural adjustment brought home the message that no nation is an island; all are part of the world financial system. This implied that nation-states—both developed and developing—should adjust their domestic economic policies and structures to conform to the international system, not vice versa, and that those nation-states that do not keep their financial house in order will forfeit some degree of their financial sovereignty.

Although manpower planning of the 1950s failed to prepare most countries to handle the educational crises in the 1960s and 1970s, a variation on it—human resources development— became very popular in the 1980s. With education defined as a basic human need, human resources development became a prerequisite to social or human development and momentum built toward establishing minimum standards of basic education for all individuals, particularly previously disadvantaged groups (Allen & Anzalone, 1981). More emphasis was placed on formal primary and secondary schools, particularly on improving efficiency and their ability to serve all citizens.


Western nation-states reacted to global recession in the early 1990s with cutbacks in development assistance to both multilateral and bilateral organizations. This reinforced the influence of the World Bank in education in developing countries. The Bank maintained its large structural adjustment loans and continued to employ more social science researchers than any other international development organization (Jones, 1997). By the early 1990s, however, the World Bank was coupling its structural adjustment loans with social dimensions of adjustment packages. In general, these packages were designed to strengthen the borrower country's capacity to monitor the effects of structural adjustment on the poor and to channel compensatory program funds through grassroots NGOs. By the mid-1990s, World Bank literature was speaking of development with a human face and about sustainable human development rather than aggregate economic growth.

The World Bank joined with UNESCO, UNICEF, and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) to sponsor the World Conference on Education for All (1990, Jomtien, Thailand). Whereas instrumental arguments lingered just below the surface in much of the focus on girls' education, normative arguments showed up in the claim of universality in the title of the conference, of human beings having inalienable learning needs (Inter-Agency Commission. World Conference on Education for All, 1990), and of underlying equity concerns embedded in calls for quality education for all (King & Singh, 1991).

The World Bank, convinced that the social returns to primary schooling were higher than for any other type of schooling, promoted formal primary and secondary schools. In the interest of equity, both the Bank and other international development organizations devoted more attention in the 1990s to school quality, both in terms of classroom teaching and curriculum. Most countries now have a national policy mandating universal primary education and the decade has been marked by interest in alternate ways to get children, particularly girls, in remote and/or conservative areas into modern schools (Ahmed, Chabbott, Joshi, & Pande, 1993).

In summary, the measures of development as an international and a national concern have changed since the 1950s from a narrow focus on national economic growth to incorporate measures of individual welfare and human rights. At the same time, the locus of responsibility for the development imperative has shifted from the national to the global level. Finally, education became inextricably linked with notions of development, and the levels and types of education emphasized in different decades mirror trends in broader development discourse, not necessarily empirical research on education and development.

None of the education approaches described previously (fundamental education, functional education, quality learning for all, etc.) was fully implemented and therefore the postulated contribution of education to development that each claimed has never been empirically estabhshed. However, these theories about the relationship between education and development were asserted and reiterated at hundreds of international conferences in the postwar period, many of them aimed particularly at officials in low-income countries and in international development agencies. The role of professionals in promoting these conferences that, in turn, promoted different levels and types of education because of their putative links to development, is the subject of the next section.

Professionalizing Educational Development

Between the end of World War II and the beginning of the 1980s, the background and composition of the staff of international development organizations changed significantly. Originally


recruited from former colonial officers, from children of missionaries, and from war relief workers, newer staff includes former volunteers with organizations like the Peace Corps and International Voluntary Service and highly educated, expatriate officials from developing countries, fleeing political upheaval or in search of a larger professional milieu (Chabbott, 1996).

The work of the staff in governmental and nongovernmental development organizations has grown more bureaucratic and professionalized over time. Development professionals have created and are now sustained by a network of support organizations and publications. For example, membership in the Society for International Development (f. 1957) now includes close to 10,000 individuals and over 120 organizations or agencies in 60 countries. The bimonthly International Development Abstracts (f. 1982) covers more than 500 journals and other serial publications and the Development Periodicals Index (f. 1991) lists about 600. With respect to the education sector, the study of developing countries has occupied considerable space in major comparative and international educational journals and conferences since the 1950s. By the late 1970s, specialization in educational development led to the establishment of at least one journal (the International Journal of Educational Development, f 1981); a dozen postbaccalaureate degree programs, such as the Stanford International Development Education Committee (f. 1965); and associations, such as the Nordic Association for the Study of Education in Developing Countries (f. 1981).

In spite of their efforts to professionalize, the routine barriers created by lengthy tours overseas and by preoccupation with the politics of securing government funding tend to isolate development professionals from the Western academic community. Like professionals in all fields, many intend but few are able to remain up-to-date with new developments in their fields, such as debates in recent decades about the gray nature of the relationship between education and development.

Nonetheless, these professionals play a role in the rise in interest in education and overseas development in Western schools of education. For example, volunteer teachers returning from service with relief agencies and with later development agencies (i.e., pre-professionals in our terms), such as the American Friends Service Committee and the Peace Corps, brought new interest in developing countries to international education departments in graduate schools of education. In addition, development agencies funded short-term and long-term training for officials and academics from developing countries, creating an important source of revenue for some schools of education. The Ford Foundation funded the creation or expansion of development departments in many schools of education in the United States. Most directly, development agencies generated a demand for experts in education who could provide advice to ministries of education in developing countries. Within academia, the study of education in developing countries usually resided in a broader department of comparative and/or international education in a school of education.

Despite their symbiosis, the challenge to human capital theory mounted in academic circles rarely surfaced in professional educational development circles. Instead, professional debates have focused more on the relative strength of instrumental (education as an input to economic growth) versus human rights justifications for education and for the value of different levels of education in different contexts. Faith in the power of education to address core development concerns has grown over time, as described in the preceding section. This faith culminated in the 1990 World Conference on Education for All (EFA).

As noted previously, since the late 1950s, international development conferences have proved a popular way for chronically underfunded international development organizations to move the development agenda forward, to raise global awareness about a particular problem, and to call on nation-states to bring resources to bear on that problem. By 1990, various UN


and other donor organizations had sponsored hundreds of world and regional educational conferences and had produced more than 77 recommendations to education ministers and about a dozen general declarations on the subject of education.

By 1990 all of the components of the blueprint described earlier in Figure 7.1, which allowed international development professionals to legitimately initiate, sponsor, and follow up world development conferences, were in place. The blueprint includes creating a sense of crisis about some sector at the global level (Coombs, 1968, 1985); mobilizing governmental consensus around a non-binding declaration and a framework for action; generating national plans of action; generating additional national and international funding for those plans; es-tabUshing international means to monitor compliance with national plans; and, wherever possible, translating the subject of the conference into a binding international covenant or defining it more forcefully as a human right (UNESCO, Education for All Forum Secretariat, 1993).

In addition, the Education for All conference was one of the first global conferences to invite development NGOs, both international ones and those formed in developing countries, as full participants. These NGOs later helped to monitor national governments' compliance with agreements made at the conference. Equipped with inexpensive facsimile machines and electronic mail connections to other groups and organizations around the world, local NGOs are able to report lags in government efforts to turn international commitments into action (Social Watch, 1996).

The impact of EFA on literacy and on primary school enrollments, or even on international development assistance levels to education, has yet to be assessed (Bennell & Furlong, 1998; Hallak, 1991). Meanwhile, the effects of the EFA Conference and other international development projects on the way education is defined, organized, and appears at the global, national, and classroom levels, particularly in low-income countries, remains to be explored.

Summary

International development professionals have invoked taken-for-granted ideals to mobilize both nation-states and NGOs around a menu of technical-functional education needs. These ideals, the professionals' claims of technical-functional expertise, and the degree to which the professionals have gained global acceptance of certain activities, such as international conferences, increase the influence of these professionals beyond their individual or collective social, economic, or political status.

In this sense development professionals should not be mainly construed as powerful agents pursuing their own interests or those of their nation-states of origin. These professionals have, along with other mechanisms, played an important role in recent decades in diffusing blueprints of education and in the development and the expansion of different levels and types of education in different decades. They have mainly accomplished this by enacting the role of objective experts and of rational managers, engaged in highly legitimate activities, associated with some of the most taken-for-granted notions of progress and justice at the global level.

CONCLUSIONS

The relationship between education and development is a problematic one. Individual schooling tends to raise individual wages, make individuals more politically active (though not necessarily more tolerant), and promote modern attitudes. Whether these effects can be largely


attributed to education or whether, instead, they are evidence of more general processes of Westernization remains to be explored.

The effects of different types of education at the societal level, on national economic, political, and/or cultural development, are ambiguous. Mass education has had a positive and relatively robust effect on national development. The effects of higher education on societal development, in contrast, have not been significant and/or consistent.

The effects of development on education are no less problematic. Mass schooling is not, as was previously asserted, a rational response to increasing demand for literate workers in the course of modernization; in both developed and developing countries, mass education was instituted far in advance of any functional need for it. Instead, since the end of World War II, the expansion of education appears to be attuned to the transnational blueprints for promoting development through education.

These blueprints are reflected in international development discourse articulated by development professionals in international organizations and diffused through the various activities of those organizations, including international conferences. The blueprints are informed by broad and pervasive world models of progress and justice, in which education is valued both as a human capital investment and as an inalienable human right. Nation-states are expected to commit themselves to education for development goals and strategies and they frequently do so, independent of local economic, political, or social conditions. The results are familiar ones: loose coupling between policies and practices and practices out of sync with local realities.

The institutionalization of these blueprints tends to lower the effects of national development on educational expansion, because all countries now engage in such expansion; increase the effects of national development on educational quality, as more national resources are channeled to education; increase individual returns to education by increasing credentialism; and decrease collective returns because all countries are expanding education at the same time. Further studies are needed to measure the magnitude of these and other effects.

More broadly, further studies are needed to focus on the conditions that produce stronger ties between education and development. Many prior reviews of the education and development literature have made this point, emphasizing the influence of varying societal and educational conditions on, for example, schooling and productivity (Rubinson & Brown, 1994). This review suggests that a new generation of studies should examine the institutionalization of world blueprints and their transnational carriers. The scope, coherence, specificity, and status of these blueprints varies over time. The degree to which transnational carriers cooperate or compete, specialize or overlap in area or content focus, are viewed as merely reflecting national interest, or are celebrated as autonomous beacons of professionalized expertise, also varies. Much research is needed to ascertain whether and in what ways this variation in world blueprints and their transnational carriers conditions ties between education and development at both the societal and individual level of analysis.

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