Education in the Age of Market Reforms

Over the last two and a half decades, the education sector has got a lot of attention. Educational attainments have been linked with every single socio-economic indicator used for measuring quality of life. The issues of development and growth engaging with the questions of productivity, income distribution and employment all consider skills acquired through education as an input variable in the production process. In the Indian context, the declining social sector expenditure in the post-reforms period, the failing state of the health of primary education and the increased privatisation of higher education have seen fierce debates among economists regarding the provisioning of social sector goods.

Education and Economics: Disciplinary Evolution and Policy Discourse by Saumen Chattopadhyay discusses how economics has viewed the role of education from the time it was conceptualised by neoclassical economics. The book takes the neoclassical approach forward and critically analyses whether the market for education can be considered as any other conventional market for tradable commodities. The author also contextualises the discussion to the Indian education scenario with special focus on the economics of education policies.