Effective Education as a key factor of the national development.

Can Education make a difference in the country?  Just giving it free would help to develop the country?  or just making sure all the people do get educated? or just literacy is enough to develop the country? The answer is NO.  Just the education would not contribute in developing the country.  It will be yet another factor if it is not properly designed.  The purpose of this article is to discuss how the Effective education is tied with the national development. 

What is Education?

Education in its broadest sense is any act or experience that has a formative effect on the mind, character or physical ability of an individual. In its technical sense education is the process by which society deliberately transmits its accumulated knowledge, skills and values from one generation to another.

Human development Index is as follows

0.950 and Over     0.900–0.949     0.850–0.899     0.800–0.849     0.750–0.799

0.700–0.749     0.650–0.699     0.600–0.649     0.550–0.599     0.500–0.549

0.450–0.499     0.400–0.449     0.350–0.399     under 0.350     not available

As it can be clearly noticed many parts of the world is not developed.  This shows the human development and it is not merely depend on the how strength the economy is.  For an example China and India are still developing countries but they are economically in a better position. 

Education in every sense is one of the fundamental factors of development. No country can achieve sustainable economic development without substantial investment in human capital. Education enriches people’s understanding of themselves and world. It improves the quality of their lives and leads to broad social benefits to individuals and society. Education raises people’s productivity and creativity and promotes entrepreneurship and technological advances. In addition it plays a very crucial role in securing economic and social progress and improving income distribution (Click here for the source)

Education Index is as follows

 

high, medium, and low

The amazing this is that above two graphs do not seem to be matching each other perfectly.  Not all the well educated people are developed.  Then why is that? Have a look on the below graph which shows the economic development of each country.   

Below shows how the development has spread

This is again contradicting.  All the Green area in the Education index has changed its color to a lower level.  Why is this? The reason is the quality of the eduction? It is really important to have a properly designed education system. I see two main issues

1. Quality of education system
2. Brain Drain

1. Quality of Education System

Education system should be tied to the vision of the county.  It is the heart beat of the country and if the heart beat is weak then country cannot breath.  Many countries provide Education free and some countries could gain the results and some are not.  For an example Finland is in the comfort zone and Sri Lanka is no where.

Below is a part of an US education enhancement project and just see how focused it is.  Unlikely others this directly addressing the market needs as well as R&D activities for future development.  

1. Raising educational levels to create a quality workforce
2. Improving learning and teaching from pre-school through graduate school through
   working with the public schools
   
3. Entrepreneurship Center Network, Small Business Development Centers Providing lifelong learning opportunities
4. Identifying the needs of business and industry by including them on advisory committees for academic and professional programs.
5. Taking strong and visible roles in regional initiatives through partnerships that involve hundreds of local public and private agencies.
6. Disseminating research and promoting technology transfer specialized research studies
7. Enhancing the technology infrastructure
8. Promoting livable communities through extensive regional arts programming

Below shows how the developing part of the world is performing.  The fact is that the total quality of the education is not leading to deliver productive output which aggressively contribute to the national development.  That output will be just a number of people who has knowledge but not the required knowledge in the required passion.    

2. Brain Drain

This is another area we forgot.  Due to several reasons hundreds of educated people are migrating to the developed part of the world.  This severely impact the national development as all of its quality human resource is draining to other countries.  Whole the investment made will be wasted in terms of their contributions to the national economy.  Below data shows how the brain drain is spread across the world and it can be clearly identified developing world is loosing their people. 

According to a latest study given below brain drain is a significant factor for the development of the country. 
Source of the below article: Click here

Poor countries across Africa, Central America and the Caribbean are losing sometimes staggering portions of their college-educated workers to wealthy democracies, according to a World Bank study released Tuesday.
The study's findings document a troubling pattern of "brain drain" - the flight of skilled, middle-class workers who could help lift their countries out of poverty, some analysts say. And while the exact effect of such migration is still little understood, there is a growing sense among economists that it plays a crucial role in a country's development.
The findings are based on an extensive survey of census and other data from the 30 countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which includes most of the world's richest countries.
The World Bank study, published Tuesday in a book with the title "International Migration, Remittances & the Brain Drain," found that from a quarter to almost half of the college-educated nationals of poor countries like Ghana, Mozambique, Kenya, Uganda and El Salvador live abroad in an OECD country - a fraction that rises to more than 80 percent for Haiti and Jamaica.
In contrast, less than 5 percent of the skilled nationals of the powerhouses of the developing world, like India, China, Indonesia and Brazil, live abroad in an OECD country.
These patterns suggest that an extensive flight of educated people is damaging many small to medium-sized poor countries, while the largest developing countries are better able to weather relatively smaller losses of talent - and even benefit from them when their skilled workers return or invest in their native lands, said Frédéric Docquier, a lead researcher for the bank and an economist at the Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium.
"For a country with a third of its graduates missing, one has to worry," said Alan Winters, director of the World Bank's development research group.

From wiki

Pakistan

Since Pakistan began market economic reforms in the late 70s, many Pakistani began migrating to countries Western Europe, North America and Oceania. It is estimated that 30 percent of the 100,000 Pakistani students who study abroad annually return to Pakistan. The fact is there are many more job opportunities, higher standard of living and education opportunities for Pakistani living abroad, as a result Pakistan suffers severe brain drain. The Pakistani government is trying to lure back its foreign educated professionals by tweaking its salaries, housing and job incentives.

India

The UNDP estimates that India loses $2 billion a year because of the emigration of computer experts to the U.S.Indian students going abroad for their higher studies costs India a foreign exchange outflow of $10 billion annually.

There can be many other reason for the in-balance of the education spread and development spread.  But as far as I can see these two are the main reasons.  Merely the education will not help a country but it needs to be very effective.  Otherwise it would generate people who just read newspapers! Development and education should be perfectly matched!