Read "Education and Economic Growth" by Eric A. Hanusehk, Dean T. Jamison, Eliot A. Jamison, and Ludger Woessmann from the Spring 2008 issue of EducationNext:
"Education and Economic Growth" - http://educationnext.org/education-and-economic-growth/
Based on this reading and the other material presented in this week's lectures, are you convinced by the evidence that there is a strong connection between education and economic growth?
As the article mentions, education is not the only factor in economic growth (having an open economy, etc are also important), but education does seem to be a strong factor. I was glad to see that the research tried to separate out educational attainment (years of schooling) from cognitive skills (abilities actually learned), because just going to school is not enough. Children (or adults) actually need to taking in the information and then able to apply it to new situations. And sometimes that learning happens outside of a traditional school - for example, this EdX course! :-) I've seen some other research suggesting the goverance and health measures also mediate the education/intelligence effect - https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CB4QFjAA&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.aeaweb.org%2Faea%2F2014conference%2Fprogram%2Fretrieve.php%3Fpdfid%3D321&ei=KDUWVN7uE6GA8QHRn4G4Aw&usg=AFQjCNHnFN8WzabG1y_WxFeH3zKAxrDJcw&sig2=16sy5KQwoFDuGyUtSruh9w&bvm=bv.75097201,d.b2U
I was also interested in their conclusions about the contributions of the best & brightest versus raising the bar for all. I had previously seen some research seeming to show that the best & brightest contribute the most to technological innovation and economic growth - http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160289614000476 But Hanushek et al's conclusions that we should focus both on the gifted and on not leaving anyone behind seems to be based on stronger evidence.
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