Education and development the issues and the evidence - Education Research Paper
No. 06, 1993, 61 p.
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2.4 The balance of investment
between educational levels
It is often argued that because higher education unit costs are much greater than those at
secondary and primary level there is scope in many developing countries to shift
educational investment downwards. There are several elements to this argument.
Taking Sub Saharan Africa as an example Table 2 (Section 1.1) shows that in 1988 the
ratio of primary: secondary: higher education costs was 1:3.6:31.8 (based on
expenditure per student as a percentage of GNP per capita). There is a wide dispersion
from the mean in different countries such that in some higher education unit costs are
more than 50 times those at primary. Table 3 (Section 1.1) shows that higher education
enrolments consistently grew faster than those at the first level (4.5 times faster over the
period 198088 (UNESCO 1991:98)). Thus for every additional place in higher
education an extra class of primary school children could have been financed.
Moreover the proportion of total public educational spending allocated to higher
education in low income Sub Saharan African countries averaged about 20% in the mid
1980's (World Bank 1988:140) though enrolments at this level accounted for less than
1%, of total enrolments at primary and secondary level. The beneficiaries of higher
education are disproportionately drawn from relatively high income groups, since
children from these backgrounds have the highest survival rates through secondary
schooling and are more likely to reach high levels of academic achievement. Rates of
return to education in low income countries tend to be higher for primary than higher
education the mean rates of return for primary, secondary and higher education
respectively have been calculated as 26:17:12 for social rates of return and 40:20:32 for
private rates of return in 12 Sub Saharan African countries (Haddad et al 1991:7).
Taken together these observations seem to present a strong case in favour of more
educational investment at lower levels and less subsidy of higher education from the
public budget.
Further examination of this issue suggests that the case is not so dear cut. First, it is
reasonable to argue that some higher education is needed in all countries to meet high
level human resource needs.
In many Sub Saharan African countries there remains a chronic shortage of competent