Education pays off

I just had an observation about education infrastructure in Portland in comparison to what we have in India. It is an observation rooted in the various trips that I have taken to the Centre for Urban Studies and Planning at the Portland State University (PSU).There is just so much support in this state for the minutest of sub-branches under each discipline. For instance, I just came across this huge college campus in Olympia, Washington dedicated entirely to environmental education <http://evergreen.edu/about/home.htm>


At PSU itself, there are so many learning centres and campuses. The Centre for Urban Studies is a huge building with scope for studying in so much detail. Then there are similar big buildings for related disciplines like transportation studies, planning and architecture. 

Compare this to India, where the country's best architecture "university" (School of Planning and Architecture) is actually just two buildings, with most of the faculty being of the "visiting" type, that cater to all sub-disciplines at undergraduate and graduate level. Similarly, the Departments of Economics, Geography, Sociology and Commerce (which themselves are huge and diverse fields with so many sub-disciplines) at the University of Delhi are combined into a campus that would compare in size to any one centre for studies (such as the Centre for Urban Studies) in Portland. 

No wonder the scope of detailed academic discourse as well as the positive externalities generated by intra-disciplinary research in varied fields as well as inter-disciplinary exchange gets limited because of the education infrastructure in India. For instance, I could access the weekly Transportation Seminar Series organised by the Centre for Transportation Studies in Portland through a high quality web stream from my office desk. If the infrastructure was not this high quality, this kind of widespread exchange and discourse would have never been possible, as is the case in India. 

Come to think of it, we have so grossly under-invested in education infrastructure (although the higher education system has probably received a proportionally larger share of overall education investment). 

Consider this: In the decade of the 50s when we had achieved independence and were required to build up education infrastructure for a long-run (20-30 years in future) benefit, we invested an average of 2 per cent of our national income (which in absolute numbers was not really huge because of our tight economy) on education. So we started off with this huge deficit. Given that education investments have a long-run return, I would presume the initial deficit would have had a multiplier effect, leading to a huge human capital deficit. This is evident even today, as lack of adequate and high quality human capital is one of the primary concerns pointed out by all businesses in India today. 

So given this deficit was so stark, you would expect that the government would step up investment in education not only to meet the initial deficit and play catch up, but also to prepare for the next two decades by ensuring sufficient infrastructure that could create sufficient human capital stock for India's economic boom expected in coming years!!?

But in reality, not until 1986 did the government even think of setting a minimal requirement of investing 6% of national income on education. We still haven't met this target of course, and I'm sure if you factor in the cost of the "Corruption" tax, we are still grossly under-investing. Also keep in mind that education has a long-run payoff in terms of the capital that gets generated, and you can be certain that we are in for the hugest human capital deficit in our history (adding to which there is brain drain to worry about).

I can't find too much research on this subject for India, but there must be some (there definitely needs to be). I will look for numbers for Portland, because at the surface, it seems the investments have already paid off immensely. Portland has one of the best designers (hi-tech), the best artists, the best planners and all the high-skill human capital that any place would aspire to have. I guess we need to find some good quanitative comparative research, or do some on our own, to figure this one out.