Education, employment and human development: illustrations from Mexico

Abstract

By applying Amartya Sen's capability approach, this article questions the functionalist idea that suggests that education can precipitate economic growth and development. It will be argued that the freedom‐centred perspective advances the concept of human capital and that it allows a deeper understanding of the relationship between higher education and human development in Mexico. This empirical‐based article shows how an educational institution contributes to expanding its graduates' basic functionings (e.g. being able to acquire knowledge, being able to get a job in a short time, being able to change jobs and thus to improve earnings, being able to search for better opportunities). However, a further enlargement of human capabilities is restrained due to the lack of social and economic opportunities which are commonly neglected in the mainstream analyses on education, employment and development. The removal of such ‘unfreedoms’ demands a renovated perspective in which education can be seen as a factor—momentous as it is—that interacts continuously with contradictory forces within complex social settings.

Acknowledgements

To professors Haleh Afshar and Amartya Sen I owe very special thanks for their comments on earlier drafts. Thanks to two anonymous referees who provided insightful comments that helped me to improve this version. Finally, I am also grateful to Deborah Fabri, Max Niño and Dulce C. Mendoza for their reading of this document.

Notes

1. Alison Wolf argues that there is no clear indication that the United Kingdom, or any other developed country, is spending below some critical level, or that pumping more money into education ‘will guarantee even half a percent of a year's extra growth’ (2002, p. 53).

2. The dominant approach that supported the existence of this linkage emerged from classical economics and its founder, Adam Smith (1723–1790).

3. Within this approach we should distinguish two levels of analysis. The first is a macro‐analysis, which estimates the impact of education on economic growth through the function production: output = f(land, labour, capital and human capital). The second is a micro‐analysis, which is derived from the first, but in which the estimations are based on cost–benefit analysis techniques. This approach, rather than being a means to test the impact of education on development, has been used as a rational basis for educational planning, which has raised severe contradictions in developing countries. On this, see Bennell (1996), Colclough, (1996, 1997) and Flores‐Crespo (2000).

4. Some of these questions are as follows: Is it sufficient to claim that by receiving formal or informal education a person automatically expands her/his freedoms? Which other factors could intervene in the expansion of the capabilities of an academically trained individual? Is education still related to freedom, as philosophers of education have remarked? Do skills, competence and professional functionings have the same meaning? Can learning outcomes be deemed as a capability? Do learning aims say something useful in terms of capabilities? Is it illogical to think that the results of academic assessment processes could help us evaluate functionings (consider, for instance, the Programme for International Student Assessment of the OECD)?

5. This process was arbitrary and did not imply any ‘democratic process,’ as Sen has clearly suggested Robeyns (2005).

6. For this research, a ‘high’ wage was defined as above seven times the minimum salary, a ‘middle’ rate was established as between three to seven times the minimum salary and a low wage was below three times the minimum salary. At the time of the research, the minimum salary rate for Mexico was Mx$1137 per month (US$113 approximately).

7. This argument was definitively settled in accordance with the International Standard Classification of Education developed by UNESCO.

8. The decision to stop this upgrading process was assumed to be because of political conflicts between a former under‐secretary of higher education and a former under‐secretary of technological education who, it was said, saw the consolidation and the expansion of the technological universities as a threat to the technological institutes.

9. According to Brown, ‘in ideal‐typical terms a high skills economy is one which has a high social capacity for learning, innovation and productivity in a post‐industrial knowledge economy’ (1999, p. 239).

10. For a further discussion on how to situate education in the capability approach, see Flores‐Crespo (in press) and the interesting work developed by several members of The Capability Approach and Education Network (http://www.hd‐ca.org/thematic_groups.php#education, accessed 18 January 2007)