Examines whether private school vouchers would increase educational quality in public and private schools. Even in models featuring X-inefficient (budget-maximizing) administrators, vouchers' effects on quality are ambiguous. Vouchers may reduce the enrollment response to changes in public-school quality by placing different households on the…

Suggests a framework for estimating the costs associated with shifting from the traditional method of financing and administering U.S. public schools to an educational voucher system. Uses certain framework components to compute "ballpark" estimates in five cost areas: accommodating additional students, record keeping, student…

Examines educational reforms relating to school choice introduced in England and Wales by Conservative governments. Evaluates whether choice has increased, and for whom, and whether desired achievement standards have been met. The range of schools has increased and student performance has improved. However, curricular diversity is constrained by…

Analysis of a Chilean voucher system shows that public schools produce higher quality education (measured in achievement test scores), after controlling for school resources and type of student enrolled. Public schools achieve higher performance with disadvantaged children; private schools produce higher scores with advantaged students. Greater…

Although the United States prides itself on individualism and free markets, parents in many other countries have more freedom of choice than Americans. This review describes Charles L. Glenn's book "Educational Freedom in Eastern Europe," provides background for choice in formerly communist countries, and summarizes dilemmas that choice…

A voucher system enabling parents to choose freely the schools their children attend is the most feasible way to improve education. Vouchers will encourage privatization. That will unleash the drive, imagination, and energy of competitive free enterprise to revolutionize the education process. Government schools will be forced to improve to retain…

Presents a framework for financing lifelong learning that will be more comprehensive, efficient, equitable, and flexible than the existing approach. Specifies essential components of lifelong learning and raises question of who should pay. Suggests a system for constructing both international and national databases on lifelong learning that can…

Discusses economic rationales for governmental intervention in the education market. Evaluates different proposals for financing higher education centered on three themes: more reliance on tuition fees, a shift from grants to student loan systems, and different types of voucher models. Discusses various countries' experience with such models. (56…

Examines recent returns to schooling and vocational and occupational training in OECD countries. Provides estimates of short-cut, Mincer-type, and internal rates of return to schooling and alternative estimates of returns to formal and informal post-school training investments. High-return countries include Austria, Canada, France, Mexico,…

Identifies market and nonmarket returns to education over graduates' life cycle, as well as social benefit externalities. Considers most recent developments in measuring and evaluating these returns, relating them to costs. The capacity to finance lifelong learning depends on identification and measurement capacity and political processes. (149…

Using 1980-81 and 1990-91 Household Survey data, analyzes educational expansion in Spain, estimating earnings equations for male family heads and comparing rates of return-to-education. Decomposes changes in men's average earnings to assess the contribution of population structure variations and pay-system changes. Returns to secondary education…

Applies data envelopment analysis to measure value added in Master of Business Administration education in the United States. Highlights the MBA program as an example of a value-adding process in education, and demonstrates how such programs' efficiency in providing value to students may be evaluated. The top 20 MBA programs resemble the second 20…

Demonstrates that popular assertions regarding the social benefits of additional higher education are dubious. Reveals four decisive factors: presumed economic growth; changes in graduates' and nongraduates' relative earnings; differences between the marginal and average student; and belief in scale economies. Unless economic growth favors…

Rapid, inadequately funded expansion of British higher education between 1990-96 contributed to a funding crisis. This paper, an updated version of a report submitted to the National Committee of Inquiry into Higher Education, proposes a coherent reform strategy involving a wide-ranging system of student loans, flexibility to allow universities to…

Examines matching problems between education and employment in Germany by examining past and present trends in vocational education and higher education. Analyzes transitions into both education systems, scrutinizing the entrance of skilled workers and higher education graduates into the employment system. Training in production occupations has…