essay on importance of education in national development

Education is Fundamental to Development and Growth

Elizabeth king.

Education is fundamental to development and growth. The human mind makes possible all development achievements, from health advances and agricultural innovations to efficient public administration and private sector growth. For countries to reap these benefits fully, they need to unleash the potential of the human mind. And there is no better tool for doing so than education.

Twenty years ago, government officials and development partners met to affirm the importance of education in development—on economic development and broadly on improving people’s lives—and together declared Education for All as a goal. While enrolments have risen in promising fashion around the world, learning levels have remained disappointingly and many remain left behind. Because growth, development, and poverty reduction depend on the knowledge and skills that people acquire, not the number of years that they sit in a classroom, we must transform our call to action from Education for All to Learning for All.

The World Bank’s forthcoming Education Strategy will emphasize several core ideas: Invest early. Invest smartly. Invest in learning for all .

First, foundational skills acquired early in childhood make possible a lifetime of learning. The traditional view of education as starting in primary school takes up the challenge too late. The science of brain development shows that learning needs to be encouraged early and often, both inside and outside of the formal schooling system. Prenatal health and early childhood development programs that include education and health are consequently important to realize this potential. In the primary years, quality teaching is essential to give students the foundational literacy and numeracy on which lifelong learning depends. Adolescence is also a period of high potential for learning, but many teenagers leave school at this point, lured by the prospect of a job, the need to help their families, or turned away by the cost of schooling. For those who drop out too early, second-chance and nonformal learning opportunities are essential to ensure that all youth can acquire skills for the labor market. 

Second, getting results requires smart investments —that is, investments that prioritize and monitor learning, beyond traditional metrics, such as the number of teachers trained or number of students enrolled. Quality needs to be the focus of education investments, with learning gains as the key metric of quality.  Resources are too limited and the challenges too big to be designing policies and programs in the dark. We need evidence on what works in order to invest smartly.

Third, learning for all means ensuring that all students, and not just the most privileged or gifted, acquire the knowledge and skills that they need. Major challenges of access remain for disadvantaged populations at the primary, secondary and tertiary levels. We must lower the barriers that keep girls, children with disabilities, and ethnolinguistic minorities from attaining as much education as other population groups. “Learning for All” promotes the equity goals that underlie Education for All and the MDGs. Without confronting equity issues, it will be impossible to achieve the objective of learning for all.

Achieving learning for all will be challenging, but it is the right agenda for the next decade. It is the knowledge and skills that children and youth acquire today—not simply their school attendance—that will drive their employability, productivity, health, and well-being in the decades to come, and that will help ensure that their communities and nations thrive.

Read the full text of my speech to the Education World Forum here.

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Non-resident Senior Fellow, Brookings Institution

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The World Bank Group is the largest financier of education in the developing world, working in 90 countries and committed to helping them reach SDG4: access to inclusive and equitable quality education and lifelong learning opportunities for all by 2030.

Education is a human right, a powerful driver of development, and one of the strongest instruments for reducing poverty and improving health, gender equality, peace, and stability. It delivers large, consistent returns in terms of income, and is the most important factor to ensure equity and inclusion.

For individuals, education promotes employment, earnings, health, and poverty reduction. Globally, there is a  9% increase in hourly earnings for every extra year of schooling . For societies, it drives long-term economic growth, spurs innovation, strengthens institutions, and fosters social cohesion.  Education is further a powerful catalyst to climate action through widespread behavior change and skilling for green transitions.

Developing countries have made tremendous progress in getting children into the classroom and more children worldwide are now in school. But learning is not guaranteed, as the  2018 World Development Report  (WDR) stressed.

Making smart and effective investments in people’s education is critical for developing the human capital that will end extreme poverty. At the core of this strategy is the need to tackle the learning crisis, put an end to  Learning Poverty , and help youth acquire the advanced cognitive, socioemotional, technical and digital skills they need to succeed in today’s world. 

In low- and middle-income countries, the share of children living in  Learning Poverty  (that is, the proportion of 10-year-old children that are unable to read and understand a short age-appropriate text) increased from 57% before the pandemic to an estimated  70%  in 2022.

However, learning is in crisis. More than 70 million more people were pushed into poverty during the COVID pandemic, a billion children lost a year of school , and three years later the learning losses suffered have not been recouped .  If a child cannot read with comprehension by age 10, they are unlikely to become fluent readers. They will fail to thrive later in school and will be unable to power their careers and economies once they leave school.

The effects of the pandemic are expected to be long-lasting. Analysis has already revealed deep losses, with international reading scores declining from 2016 to 2021 by more than a year of schooling.  These losses may translate to a 0.68 percentage point in global GDP growth.  The staggering effects of school closures reach beyond learning. This generation of children could lose a combined total of  US$21 trillion in lifetime earnings  in present value or the equivalent of 17% of today’s global GDP – a sharp rise from the 2021 estimate of a US$17 trillion loss. 

Action is urgently needed now – business as usual will not suffice to heal the scars of the pandemic and will not accelerate progress enough to meet the ambitions of SDG 4. We are urging governments to implement ambitious and aggressive Learning Acceleration Programs to get children back to school, recover lost learning, and advance progress by building better, more equitable and resilient education systems.

Last Updated: Mar 25, 2024

The World Bank’s global education strategy is centered on ensuring learning happens – for everyone, everywhere. Our vision is to ensure that everyone can achieve her or his full potential with access to a quality education and lifelong learning. To reach this, we are helping countries build foundational skills like literacy, numeracy, and socioemotional skills – the building blocks for all other learning. From early childhood to tertiary education and beyond – we help children and youth acquire the skills they need to thrive in school, the labor market and throughout their lives.

Investing in the world’s most precious resource – people – is paramount to ending poverty on a livable planet.  Our experience across more than 100 countries bears out this robust connection between human capital, quality of life, and economic growth: when countries strategically invest in people and the systems designed to protect and build human capital at scale, they unlock the wealth of nations and the potential of everyone.

Building on this, the World Bank supports resilient, equitable, and inclusive education systems that ensure learning happens for everyone. We do this by generating and disseminating evidence, ensuring alignment with policymaking processes, and bridging the gap between research and practice.

The World Bank is the largest source of external financing for education in developing countries, with a portfolio of about $26 billion in 94 countries including IBRD, IDA and Recipient-Executed Trust Funds. IDA operations comprise 62% of the education portfolio.

The investment in FCV settings has increased dramatically and now accounts for 26% of our portfolio.

World Bank projects reach at least 425 million students -one-third of students in low- and middle-income countries.

The World Bank’s Approach to Education

Five interrelated pillars of a well-functioning education system underpin the World Bank’s education policy approach:

• Learners are prepared and motivated to learn;
• Teachers are prepared, skilled, and motivated to facilitate learning and skills acquisition;
• Learning resources (including education technology) are available, relevant, and used to improve teaching and learning;
• Schools are safe and inclusive; and
• Education Systems are well-managed, with good implementation capacity and adequate financing.

The Bank is already helping governments design and implement cost-effective programs and tools to build these pillars.

Our Principles:

• We pursue systemic reform supported by political commitment to learning for all children. 
• We focus on equity and inclusion through a progressive path toward achieving universal access to quality education, including children and young adults in fragile or conflict affected areas , those in marginalized and rural communities,  girls and women , displaced populations,  students with disabilities , and other vulnerable groups.
• We focus on results and use evidence to keep improving policy by using metrics to guide improvements.   
• We want to ensure financial commitment commensurate with what is needed to provide basic services to all. 
• We invest wisely in technology so that education systems embrace and learn to harness technology to support their learning objectives.   

Laying the groundwork for the future

Country challenges vary, but there is a menu of options to build forward better, more resilient, and equitable education systems.

Countries are facing an education crisis that requires a two-pronged approach: first, supporting actions to recover lost time through remedial and accelerated learning; and, second, building on these investments for a more equitable, resilient, and effective system.

Recovering from the learning crisis must be a political priority, backed with adequate financing and the resolve to implement needed reforms.  Domestic financing for education over the last two years has not kept pace with the need to recover and accelerate learning. Across low- and lower-middle-income countries, the  average share of education in government budgets fell during the pandemic , and in 2022 it remained below 2019 levels.

The best chance for a better future is to invest in education and make sure each dollar is put toward improving learning.  In a time of fiscal pressure, protecting spending that yields long-run gains – like spending on education – will maximize impact.  We still need more and better funding for education.  Closing the learning gap will require increasing the level, efficiency, and equity of education spending—spending smarter is an imperative.

• Education technology  can be a powerful tool to implement these actions by supporting teachers, children, principals, and parents; expanding accessible digital learning platforms, including radio/ TV / Online learning resources; and using data to identify and help at-risk children, personalize learning, and improve service delivery.

Looking ahead

We must seize this opportunity  to reimagine education in bold ways. Together, we can build forward better more equitable, effective, and resilient education systems for the world’s children and youth.

Accelerating Improvements

Supporting countries in establishing time-bound learning targets and a focused education investment plan, outlining actions and investments geared to achieve these goals.

Launched in 2020, the  Accelerator Program  works with a set of countries to channel investments in education and to learn from each other. The program coordinates efforts across partners to ensure that the countries in the program show improvements in foundational skills at scale over the next three to five years. These investment plans build on the collective work of multiple partners, and leverage the latest evidence on what works, and how best to plan for implementation.  Countries such as Brazil (the state of Ceará) and Kenya have achieved dramatic reductions in learning poverty over the past decade at scale, providing useful lessons, even as they seek to build on their successes and address remaining and new challenges.  

Universalizing Foundational Literacy

Readying children for the future by supporting acquisition of foundational skills – which are the gateway to other skills and subjects.

The  Literacy Policy Package (LPP)   consists of interventions focused specifically on promoting acquisition of reading proficiency in primary school. These include assuring political and technical commitment to making all children literate; ensuring effective literacy instruction by supporting teachers; providing quality, age-appropriate books; teaching children first in the language they speak and understand best; and fostering children’s oral language abilities and love of books and reading.

Advancing skills through TVET and Tertiary

Ensuring that individuals have access to quality education and training opportunities and supporting links to employment.

Tertiary education and skills systems are a driver of major development agendas, including human capital, climate change, youth and women’s empowerment, and jobs and economic transformation. A comprehensive skill set to succeed in the 21st century labor market consists of foundational and higher order skills, socio-emotional skills, specialized skills, and digital skills. Yet most countries continue to struggle in delivering on the promise of skills development. 

The World Bank is supporting countries through efforts that address key challenges including improving access and completion, adaptability, quality, relevance, and efficiency of skills development programs. Our approach is via multiple channels including projects, global goods, as well as the Tertiary Education and Skills Program . Our recent reports including Building Better Formal TVET Systems and STEERing Tertiary Education provide a way forward for how to improve these critical systems.

Addressing Climate Change

Mainstreaming climate education and investing in green skills, research and innovation, and green infrastructure to spur climate action and foster better preparedness and resilience to climate shocks.

Our approach recognizes that education is critical for achieving effective, sustained climate action. At the same time, climate change is adversely impacting education outcomes. Investments in education can play a huge role in building climate resilience and advancing climate mitigation and adaptation. Climate change education gives young people greater awareness of climate risks and more access to tools and solutions for addressing these risks and managing related shocks. Technical and vocational education and training can also accelerate a green economic transformation by fostering green skills and innovation. Greening education infrastructure can help mitigate the impact of heat, pollution, and extreme weather on learning, while helping address climate change. 

Examples of this work are projects in Nigeria (life skills training for adolescent girls), Vietnam (fostering relevant scientific research) , and Bangladesh (constructing and retrofitting schools to serve as cyclone shelters).

Strengthening Measurement Systems

Enabling countries to gather and evaluate information on learning and its drivers more efficiently and effectively.

The World Bank supports initiatives to help countries effectively build and strengthen their measurement systems to facilitate evidence-based decision-making. Examples of this work include:

(1) The  Global Education Policy Dashboard (GEPD) : This tool offers a strong basis for identifying priorities for investment and policy reforms that are suited to each country context by focusing on the three dimensions of practices, policies, and politics.

• Highlights gaps between what the evidence suggests is effective in promoting learning and what is happening in practice in each system; and
• Allows governments to track progress as they act to close the gaps.

The GEPD has been implemented in 13 education systems already – Peru, Rwanda, Jordan, Ethiopia, Madagascar, Mozambique, Islamabad, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Sierra Leone, Niger, Gabon, Jordan and Chad – with more expected by the end of 2024.

(2)  Learning Assessment Platform (LeAP) : LeAP is a one-stop shop for knowledge, capacity-building tools, support for policy dialogue, and technical staff expertise to support student achievement measurement and national assessments for better learning.

Supporting Successful Teachers

Helping systems develop the right selection, incentives, and support to the professional development of teachers.

Currently, the World Bank Education Global Practice has over 160 active projects supporting over 18 million teachers worldwide, about a third of the teacher population in low- and middle-income countries. In 12 countries alone, these projects cover 16 million teachers, including all primary school teachers in Ethiopia and Turkey, and over 80% in Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Vietnam.

A World Bank-developed classroom observation tool, Teach, was designed to capture the quality of teaching in low- and middle-income countries. It is now 3.6 million students.

While Teach helps identify patterns in teacher performance, Coach leverages these insights to support teachers to improve their teaching practice through hands-on in-service teacher professional development (TPD).

Our recent report on Making Teacher Policy Work proposes a practical framework to uncover the black box of effective teacher policy and discusses the factors that enable their scalability and sustainability.

 Supporting Education Finance Systems

Strengthening country financing systems to mobilize resources for education and make better use of their investments in education.

Our approach is to bring together multi-sectoral expertise to engage with ministries of education and finance and other stakeholders to develop and implement effective and efficient public financial management systems; build capacity to monitor and evaluate education spending, identify financing bottlenecks, and develop interventions to strengthen financing systems; build the evidence base on global spending patterns and the magnitude and causes of spending inefficiencies; and develop diagnostic tools as public goods to support country efforts.

Working in Fragile, Conflict, and Violent (FCV) Contexts

The massive and growing global challenge of having so many children living in conflict and violent situations requires a response at the same scale and scope. Our education engagement in the Fragility, Conflict and Violence (FCV) context, which stands at US$5.35 billion, has grown rapidly in recent years, reflecting the ever-increasing importance of the FCV agenda in education. Indeed, these projects now account for more than 25% of the World Bank education portfolio.

Education is crucial to minimizing the effects of fragility and displacement on the welfare of youth and children in the short-term and preventing the emergence of violent conflict in the long-term. 

Support to Countries Throughout the Education Cycle

Our support to countries covers the entire learning cycle, to help shape resilient, equitable, and inclusive education systems that ensure learning happens for everyone. 

The ongoing  Supporting  Egypt  Education Reform project , 2018-2025, supports transformational reforms of the Egyptian education system, by improving teaching and learning conditions in public schools. The World Bank has invested $500 million in the project focused on increasing access to quality kindergarten, enhancing the capacity of teachers and education leaders, developing a reliable student assessment system, and introducing the use of modern technology for teaching and learning. Specifically, the share of Egyptian 10-year-old students, who could read and comprehend at the global minimum proficiency level, increased to 45 percent in 2021.

In  Nigeria , the $75 million  Edo  Basic Education Sector and Skills Transformation (EdoBESST)  project, running from 2020-2024, is focused on improving teaching and learning in basic education. Under the project, which covers 97 percent of schools in the state, there is a strong focus on incorporating digital technologies for teachers. They were equipped with handheld tablets with structured lesson plans for their classes. Their coaches use classroom observation tools to provide individualized feedback. Teacher absence has reduced drastically because of the initiative. Over 16,000 teachers were trained through the project, and the introduction of technology has also benefited students.

Through the $235 million  School Sector Development Program  in  Nepal  (2017-2022), the number of children staying in school until Grade 12 nearly tripled, and the number of out-of-school children fell by almost seven percent. During the pandemic, innovative approaches were needed to continue education. Mobile phone penetration is high in the country. More than four in five households in Nepal have mobile phones. The project supported an educational service that made it possible for children with phones to connect to local radio that broadcast learning programs.

From 2017-2023, the $50 million  Strengthening of State Universities  in  Chile  project has made strides to improve quality and equity at state universities. The project helped reduce dropout: the third-year dropout rate fell by almost 10 percent from 2018-2022, keeping more students in school.

The World Bank’s first  Program-for-Results financing in education  was through a $202 million project in  Tanzania , that ran from 2013-2021. The project linked funding to results and aimed to improve education quality. It helped build capacity, and enhanced effectiveness and efficiency in the education sector. Through the project, learning outcomes significantly improved alongside an unprecedented expansion of access to education for children in Tanzania. From 2013-2019, an additional 1.8 million students enrolled in primary schools. In 2019, the average reading speed for Grade 2 students rose to 22.3 words per minute, up from 17.3 in 2017. The project laid the foundation for the ongoing $500 million  BOOST project , which supports over 12 million children to enroll early, develop strong foundational skills, and complete a quality education.

The $40 million  Cambodia  Secondary Education Improvement project , which ran from 2017-2022, focused on strengthening school-based management, upgrading teacher qualifications, and building classrooms in Cambodia, to improve learning outcomes, and reduce student dropout at the secondary school level. The project has directly benefited almost 70,000 students in 100 target schools, and approximately 2,000 teachers and 600 school administrators received training.

The World Bank is co-financing the $152.80 million  Yemen  Restoring Education and Learning Emergency project , running from 2020-2024, which is implemented through UNICEF, WFP, and Save the Children. It is helping to maintain access to basic education for many students, improve learning conditions in schools, and is working to strengthen overall education sector capacity. In the time of crisis, the project is supporting teacher payments and teacher training, school meals, school infrastructure development, and the distribution of learning materials and school supplies. To date, almost 600,000 students have benefited from these interventions.

The $87 million  Providing an Education of Quality in  Haiti  project supported approximately 380 schools in the Southern region of Haiti from 2016-2023. Despite a highly challenging context of political instability and recurrent natural disasters, the project successfully supported access to education for students. The project provided textbooks, fresh meals, and teacher training support to 70,000 students, 3,000 teachers, and 300 school directors. It gave tuition waivers to 35,000 students in 118 non-public schools. The project also repaired 19 national schools damaged by the 2021 earthquake, which gave 5,500 students safe access to their schools again.

In 2013, just 5% of the poorest households in  Uzbekistan  had children enrolled in preschools. Thanks to the  Improving Pre-Primary and General Secondary Education Project , by July 2019, around 100,000 children will have benefitted from the half-day program in 2,420 rural kindergartens, comprising around 49% of all preschool educational institutions, or over 90% of rural kindergartens in the country.

In addition to working closely with governments in our client countries, the World Bank also works at the global, regional, and local levels with a range of technical partners, including foundations, non-profit organizations, bilaterals, and other multilateral organizations. Some examples of our most recent global partnerships include:

UNICEF, UNESCO, FCDO, USAID, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation:  Coalition for Foundational Learning

The World Bank is working closely with UNICEF, UNESCO, FCDO, USAID, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation as the  Coalition for Foundational Learning  to advocate and provide technical support to ensure foundational learning.  The World Bank works with these partners to promote and endorse the  Commitment to Action on Foundational Learning , a global network of countries committed to halving the global share of children unable to read and understand a simple text by age 10 by 2030.

Australian Aid, Bernard van Leer Foundation, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Canada, Echida Giving, FCDO, German Cooperation, William & Flora Hewlett Foundation, Conrad Hilton Foundation, LEGO Foundation, Porticus, USAID: Early Learning Partnership

The Early Learning Partnership (ELP) is a multi-donor trust fund, housed at the World Bank.  ELP leverages World Bank strengths—a global presence, access to policymakers and strong technical analysis—to improve early learning opportunities and outcomes for young children around the world.

We help World Bank teams and countries get the information they need to make the case to invest in Early Childhood Development (ECD), design effective policies and deliver impactful programs. At the country level, ELP grants provide teams with resources for early seed investments that can generate large financial commitments through World Bank finance and government resources. At the global level, ELP research and special initiatives work to fill knowledge gaps, build capacity and generate public goods.

UNESCO, UNICEF:  Learning Data Compact

UNESCO, UNICEF, and the World Bank have joined forces to close the learning data gaps that still exist and that preclude many countries from monitoring the quality of their education systems and assessing if their students are learning. The three organizations have agreed to a  Learning Data Compact , a commitment to ensure that all countries, especially low-income countries, have at least one quality measure of learning by 2025, supporting coordinated efforts to strengthen national assessment systems.

UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS):   Learning Poverty Indicator

Aimed at measuring and urging attention to foundational literacy as a prerequisite to achieve SDG4, this partnership was launched in 2019 to help countries strengthen their learning assessment systems, better monitor what students are learning in internationally comparable ways and improve the breadth and quality of global data on education.

FCDO, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation:  EdTech Hub

Supported by the UK government’s Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO), in partnership with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the EdTech Hub is aimed at improving the quality of ed-tech investments. The Hub launched a rapid response Helpdesk service to provide just-in-time advisory support to 70 low- and middle-income countries planning education technology and remote learning initiatives.

MasterCard Foundation

Our Tertiary Education and Skills  global program, launched with support from the Mastercard Foundation, aims to prepare youth and adults for the future of work and society by improving access to relevant, quality, equitable reskilling and post-secondary education opportunities.  It is designed to reframe, reform, and rebuild tertiary education and skills systems for the digital and green transformation.

Bridging the AI divide: Breaking down barriers to ensure women’s leadership and participation in the Fifth Industrial Revolution

Common challenges and tailored solutions: How policymakers are strengthening early learning systems across the world

Compulsory education boosts learning outcomes and climate action

Areas of focus.

Digital Technologies

Early Childhood Development

Education Data & Measurement

Education Finance

Education in Fragile, Conflict & Violence Contexts

Girls’ Education

Higher Education

Inclusive Education

Initiatives

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• Tertiary Education and Skills Program
• Service Delivery Indicators
• Evoke: Transforming education to empower youth
• Global Education Policy Dashboard
• Global Education Evidence Advisory Panel
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Collapse and Recovery: How the COVID-19 Pandemic Eroded Human Capital and What to Do About It

BROCHURES & FACT SHEETS

Publication: Realizing Education's Promise: A World Bank Retrospective – August 2023

Education and Climate Change flyer - November 2022

Learning Losses Brochure - October 2022

World Bank Group Education Fact Sheet - September 2022

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Why education is the key to sustainable development

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Stay up to date:, economic progress.

This year marks a turning point for the world, with the international community adopting a new global development strategy in September and negotiating a universal deal to combat climate change in December. To succeed, policymakers must recognize that today’s global imperatives – to eradicate poverty and improve wellbeing, while restoring the Earth’s balance – form a single agenda, and that the most effective means of achieving it is education.

The good news is that the proposed set of Sustainable Development Goals, which will underpin global efforts for the next 15 years, reflect this recognition. Likewise, Article 6 of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) stipulates that education, training, and public awareness on climate change must be pursued.

But, with negotiations on these global agreements far from complete, it is vital that policymakers’ emphasis on education continues to be reinforced. To this end, the world’s education ministers must take the opportunity offered by this month’s World Education Forum in Incheon, South Korea, to highlight the role that education can and should play in advancing sustainable development.

A strong education system broadens access to opportunities, improves health, and bolsters the resilience of communities – all while fueling economic growth in a way that can reinforce and accelerate these processes. Moreover, education provides the skills people need to thrive in the new sustainable economy, working in areas such as renewable energy, smart agriculture, forest rehabilitation, the design of resource-efficient cities, and sound management of healthy ecosystems.

Perhaps most important, education can bring about a fundamental shift in how we think, act, and discharge our responsibilities toward one another and the planet. After all, while financial incentives, targeted policies, and technological innovation are needed to catalyze new ways of producing and consuming, they cannot reshape people’s value systems so that they willingly uphold and advance the principles of sustainable development. Schools, however, can nurture a new generation of environmentally savvy citizens to support the transition to a prosperous and sustainable future.

Some schools are already becoming learning labs for sustainable development, where young students are being prepared to adapt to and help mitigate the consequences of climate change. Guided by the UNFCCC – as well as related initiatives like the UN Alliance on Climate Change Education, Training, and Public Awareness – governments are increasingly integrating education strategies, tools, and targets into national development policies. The UNESCO-led UN Decade of Education for Sustainable Development, which began in 2005, was explicitly intended to instill in every human being “the knowledge, skills, attitudes, and values necessary to shape a sustainable future.”

Together, UNESCO and the UNFCCC are not only promoting climate-change education in schools; they are also giving teachers the tools and knowledge they need to provide that education through online courses. Already, more than 14 million students and 1.2 million teachers in 58 countries have been engaged in such learning, and 550 business schools have signed on to the Principles for Responsible Management Education, developed by the UN Global Compact.

This progress, though important, is just the beginning. What is needed now is a global movement, with every student in every country learning about sustainable development from well-trained teachers, equipped with the appropriate curricula and resources. An ambitious sustainable development agenda, together with a legally binding global climate deal, could go a long way toward catalyzing such a movement.

Of course, we cannot secure a sustainable future in a matter of months. But, with a well-designed set of commitments and targets, we can move onto the right path. And, with effective educational programs that instill in future generations the importance of restoring Earth’s balance and delivering a prosperous future for the many, rather than the few, we can stay on that path.

That is the message that education ministers must emphasize at their upcoming forum, and that policymakers should heed as they negotiate this year’s two critical global agreements.

This article is published in collaboration with  Project Syndicate.  Publication does not imply endorsement of views by the World Economic Forum.

To keep up with the Agenda  subscribe to our weekly newsletter .

Author: Irina Bokova is Director-General of UNESCO. Christiana Figueres is Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

Image: Coloured pencils are pictured in a wooden box at a nursery school. REUTERS/Michaela Rehle.

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Transforming lives through education

Transforming education to change our world

UNESCO provides global and regional leadership on all aspects of education from pre-school to higher education and throughout life. It works through its Member States and brings together governments, the private sector and civil society to strengthen education systems worldwide in order to deliver quality education for all. As a thought leader it publishes landmark reports and data for policy-makers, implements programmes on the ground from teacher training to emergency responses and establishes and monitors norms and standards for all to guide educational developments.  

Right to education in a ruined world

Southern Italy, 1950. Three children are huddled around a makeshift desk made out of reclaimed wood, scribbling in their notebooks. The classroom has an earthen floor and roughly clad walls. The children’s clothes are ragged. They are wearing home-made slippers because shoes and the money to buy them are rare commodities in the war-ravaged south. 

Although World War II ended five years earlier, the scars of conflict are still visible in this black and white photo from a report commissioned by UNESCO from legendary photojournalist David Seymour. 

At the time when the photograph was taken, less than half of Italy’s population could read and write and just a third completed primary school. 70 years later, these children’s grandchildren enjoy an over 99% literacy rate. In the wake of the war, UNESCO led a major education campaign in Europe to respond to the education crisis, to rebuild links between people and to strengthen democracy and cultural identities after years of conflict. The emphasis then was on the fundamental learning skill of literacy.  

Immediately after World War two UNESCO led a major education campaign in Europe to respond to the education crisis, fix and rebuild links between people and strengthen cultural identities after years of conflict. David Seymour’s images show the extent of the fight against illiteracy led by the post-war Italian government and non-governmental organisations backed by UNESCO. 

Looking back at the deprived surroundings Seymour captured in his photo essay, one can see the extent of success. Seventy-one years later, those children’s grandchildren enjoy a 99.16 per cent literacy rate. 

Similar programmes were held across the globe, for instance in devastated Korea where UNESCO led a major education textbook production programme in the 1950s. Several decades after, the former Secretary-General of the United Nations and Korean citizen Ban Ki-Moon expressed the importance of such a programme for the country's development: 

The flowering of literacy

In a Korea devastated by war and where UNESCO led a major education textbook production programme in the 1950s, one student, Ban Ki-Moon, now Former Secretary-General of the United Nations, saw the world open up to him through the pages of a UNESCO textbook. Several decades after, he expressed the importance of such a programme for his country's development on the world stage.

Reaching the remote villages perched atop the Andes in Peru during the early 1960s wasn’t without its challenges for UNESCO’s technical assistance programme to bring literacy to disadvantaged communities. While Peru’s economy was experiencing a prolonged period of expansion, not all Peruvians were able to benefit from this growth which was limited to the industrialised coast. Instead, Andes communities were grappling with poverty, illiteracy and depopulation. 

Today, the number of non-literate youths and adults around the world has decreased dramatically, while the global literacy rate for young people aged 15-24 years has reached 92 %. These astonishing successes reflect improved access to schooling for younger generations.

Photojournalist Paul Almasy has left us the poignant image of a barefoot older man while he’s deciphering a newspaper thanks to his newfound literacy skills.

The classroom at the UNESCO mission in Chinchera, in the Andean highlands of Peru, had allowed the old man to discover the world beyond his tiny village.

However, there are still huge obstacles to overcome. Data from the UNESCO Institute for Statistics shows that 617 million children and adolescents worldwide are not achieving minimum proficiency levels in reading and mathematics. Since the adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals in 2015 it is still the case that globally more than 450 million children - six out of 10 - have failed to gain basic literacy skills by the age of 10. And beyond literacy programmes, massive investments in skills for work and life, teacher training, and education policies are needed in a world that is changing ever faster. 

Global priorities

Africa, home to the world’s youngest population, is not on track to achieve the targets of SDG 4. Sub-Saharan Africa alone is expected to account for 25% of the school-age population by 2030, up from 12% in 1990, yet it remains the region with the highest out-of-school rates. Girls are more likely to be permanently excluded from education than boys. The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated inequalities, with 89% of learners not having access to computers and 82% lacking internet access to benefit from distance learning. The lack of trained teachers further jeopardizes progress towards SDG4: pre-pandemic only 64% of whom were trained at the primary level and 58% at the lower secondary level.

As part of its Priority Africa Flagship 2022 – 2029 , UNESCO has launched Campus Africa: Reinforcing Higher Education in Africa with the objective to build integrated, inclusive, and quality tertiary education systems and institutions, for the development of inclusive and equitable societies on the continent.

Gender    

There are immense gender gaps when it comes to access, learning achievement and education, most often at the expense of girls and women. It is estimated that some 127 million girls are out of school around the world. For many girls and women around the world, the classroom remains an elusive, often forbidden space. UNESCO monitors the educational rights of girls and women around the world and shares information on the legal progress toward securing the right to education for women in all countries. Despite important progress in recent decades, the right to education is still far from being a reality for many girls and women. Discriminatory practices stand in the way of girls and women fully exercising their right to participate in, complete, and benefit from education. And while girls have difficulty with access, boys face increasing challenges, and particularly disengagement , from education at later stages. Globally only 88 men are enrolled in tertiary education for every 100 women. In 73 countries, fewer boys than girls are enrolled in upper-secondary education.

UNESCO's Her Atlas analyzes the legal frameworks of nearly 200 states to track which laws are enabling---or inhibiting---the right to education for girls and women. This interactive world map uses a color-coded scoring system to monitor 12 indicators of legal progress towards gender equality in the right to education.

Monitoring the right to education for girls and women

What makes me proud is that soon I will finish building a new house. I have already been able to buy a cow and I will soon be able to have another pond

Madagascar’s coastal Atsinanana region is known for its lush rainforests and fish breeding.

The country has a young population, but only one out of three children can complete primary education. Among those who are able to finish primary school, only 17% have minimum reading skills, while just a fifth of them have basic maths competencies. Once they leave school, children face a precarious labour market and unstable jobs, just like their parents.

Natacha Obienne is only 21 years old, but she is already in charge of a small fish farm, a career that is usually pursued by men. As one of the many out-of-school women in her area, she was able to set up her own business after vocational training taught her the basics of financial management and entrepreneurship, as well as the practicalities of breeding fish.

She understood that fish feeding depends on the temperature of the water. If it’s well managed, a higher number of fish is produced. ‘I immediately applied everything I learnt’ she says.

The classroom she attended changed the course of her life and she hopes other young people will follow in her footsteps.

I no longer depend on my parents and I am financially independent

She’s not alone. Around 3,000 youths in Madagascar have been trained since the start of the UNESCO-backed programme, some of whom have set up their own business and achieved financial independence. Education was the best way to ease people's emancipation.

Like Emma Claudia, 25, who after her vocational training started a restaurant with just a baking tray and a saucepan.

What does my family think? They are surprised and amazed by my evolution because I haven’t been able to complete my studies. I don’t have any school diplomas.

While Natacha and Emma Claudia have been able to transform their world through education, millions of children out of school around the world are still denied that dream.

Discrimination against girls remains widespread and nearly one billion adults, mostly women, are illiterate. The lack of qualified teachers and learning materials continues to be the reality in too many schools.

Challenging these obstacles is getting harder as the world grapples with the acceleration of climate change, the emergence of digitization and artificial intelligence, and the increasing exclusion and uncertainty brought by the Covid-19 pandemic.

We resumed school a while ago and it’s been stressful. We are trying to retrieve what we lost during quarantine, the worst thing about not being in school is the number of things you miss. Learning behind a screen and learning in person are incomparable.

Aicha is lucky to be able to continue her education. Her country has the highest rate of out-of-school children in the world – 10.5 million – and nearly two-thirds are women. To compound the problem, Nigeria’s northern states suffer from the violence that targets education.

In Russia, too, Alexander and his school friends had to cope with virtual learning and the lack of interactions.

All Russian students were moved to online studying. Needless to say, it was a rough year for all of us, several friends were struggling with depressive moods. They were missing their friends and teachers. So did I.

To protect their right to education during this unprecedented disruption and beyond, UNESCO has launched the Global Education Coalition , a platform for collaboration and exchange that brings together more than 175 countries from the UN family, civil society, academia and the private sector to ensure that learning never stops.

Building skills where they are most needed

Crouched over a pedal-powered sewing machine, Harikala Buda looks younger than her 30 years. Her slim fingers fold a cut of turquoise brocade before deftly pushing it under the needle mechanism.

Harikala lives in rural Nepal, where many villagers, particularly women, don’t have access to basic education. Women like Harikala rely on local community UNESCO-supported learning centres to receive literacy and tailoring skills. In a country where 32% of people over 15 are illiterate, particularly women and those living in rural areas, education is the only route to becoming self-reliant.

I have saved a small amount. My husband’s income goes towards running the house, mine is saved. We must save today to secure our children’s future

Having access to a classroom is the first step to creating a better world for the student, the student’s children and the student’s community. This is a lesson that matters a lot to

Kalasha Khadka Khatri, a 30-year-old Nepali mother. She grew up in a family of 21, with no option to go to school. Two of her children didn’t survive infancy because she was unable to pay for medical treatment. After acquiring sewing skills at her local community learning centre, Kalasha can now provide for her family.

Harikala and Kalasha were able to learn their skills through the support of the UNESCO’s Capacity Development for Education Programme (CapED), an initiative that operates in some 26 least-developed and fragile countries. 

Reimagining the future of education

As the world slowly recovers after the COVID-19 crisis, 244 million children and youth worldwide are still out of school. And a 2022 survey by UNESCO, UNICEF, World Bank and OECD finds that one quarter of countries have yet to collect information on children who have and have not returned to school since the pandemic started.

Rebuilding how and where we learn requires policy advice, stronger education legislation, funds mobilisation, advocacy, targeted programme implementation based on sound analysis, statistics and global information sharing. Quality education also calls for the teaching of skills far beyond literacy and maths, including critical thinking against fake news in the digital era, living in harmony with nature and the ethics of artificial intelligence, to name a few of the critical skills needed in the 21st century. 

UNESCO  captured the debate around the futures of education in its landmark report from 2022 entitled Reimagining our futures together: A new social contract for education.

The Transformative Education Summit , that took place during the United Nations General Assembly in September 2022, as well as the Pre-Summit hosted by UNESCO to forge new approaches to education after the COVID-19 crisis, address the toughest bottlenecks to achieving SDG 4 and inspire young people to lead a global movement for education. World leaders committed to put education at the top of the political agenda. UNESCO has been mobilizing and consulting all stakeholders and partners to galvanize the transformation of every aspect of learning. UNESCO launched a number of key initiatives such as expanding public digital learning, making education responsive to the climate and environmental emergency, and improving access for crisis-affected children and youth.

The two children sitting at their makeshift desk in Italy in 1950 could not have imagined what a modern learning space might look like or how a modern curriculum or the tools and teacher training to deliver it might have been thought out and shaped to offer them the most from education. They could not have imagined the global drive to ensure that everyone was given a chance to learn throughout life. The only thing that has not changed since the photo was taken is the fact that education remains a fundamental and universal human right that can change the course of a life. To the millions still living in conditions of poverty, exclusion displacement and violence it opens a door to a better future.

Explore all the work and expertise of UNESCO in education

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Higher Education and Its Role for National Development. A Research Agenda with Bibliometric Analysis

• Published: 18 April 2023
• Volume 54 , pages 125–143, ( 2023 )

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• Nguyen Thi Hoai Trinh   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-9548-2692 1  

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The primary goal of this study was to evaluate the literature on the function of higher education and extract significant insights using the VosViewer and Citespaces tools. The findings reveal that higher education is a substantial worry for scientists, particularly in 2015–2019. Furthermore, research indicates a significant body of knowledge on the function of higher education in national development related to human resources, economic growth, and other social issues. Finally, the research suggests strategies for promoting higher education’s involvement in meeting the demands of the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

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Introduction

Throughout the development of humanity, especially in the recent period when the knowledge economy is the choice of most countries, education plays a vital role as a key factor and a driving force for economic development. Education and training are not only prerequisites for economic development, but they also contribute to socio-political stability and finally, education and training contribute to raising the human development index.

Studies on economic growth have long recognized that human capital is important to economic growth and that education is the primary way to accumulate human capital. Major changes in economic structures, industries, and international labor markets have resulted in a demand for rapid knowledge development as well as flexibility and career mobility for individuals. The accumulation of knowledge and technological development make individual workers more flexible in adapting to new careers. Therefore, integrated labor skills and competencies are necessary conditions for workers to succeed in today’s workplace, and this can only be achieved through being educated and trained.

Higher education is a production chain whose output is qualified human resources, serving as a foundation for forming and developing the innovative capacity to serve the country's development and contribute to human knowledge. Based on such a view, in addition to developing the higher education system to meet the learning needs of the society, higher education needs to enhance the position of higher education institutions with others in the region and around the world. To accomplish such tasks, higher education needs to be aware of its role and has positive solutions to promote the role of higher education, contributing to creating a quality workforce that meets the country's comprehensive development conditions.

The purpose of this article is to investigate the role of higher education based on mining scientific texts to explore the change of research trends over time and geography and identify potential future trends. To achieve this goal, the author uses two main tools, Vosviewer (Cicea, 2020a ) and Citespaces, to analyze the data searched from the Web of Science.

The article is structured into five main parts: the first part, the author will introduce the research content and primary purpose of the article, the following section reviews the literature to get a general picture of higher education and find gaps from previous studies. Then, the research methods section will present how to identify scientific data sources, data processing tools and synthesize databases suitable for research purposes. Then, from the research method, the author gives the results and discusses, on that basis, the author finally proposes several suitable solutions to improve the role of higher education in the country.

Literature Review

In a society full of differences, with diverse ideologies and opinions, the term “higher education” is understood in many different meanings. Diversity of opinion is inevitable, and many consider it necessary. However, we aim to discuss and learn about quality in higher education. It is a multidimensional term (Elton, 1998 ; Krause, 2012 ). According to some studies (Barnett, 1992 ), higher education is a production line whose output is qualified human resources. In this view, higher education is a process in which learners are conceived as products supplied to the labor market. Thus, higher education becomes an "input" creating the development and growth of commerce and industry; besides, higher education is a condition to expand opportunities in life for learners. According to this approach, higher education is seen as an opportunity for learners to participate in personal development through regular and flexible learning modes.

In the era of globalization, governments worldwide focus on education for sustainable development, the prerequisite is the development of a sustainable economy. Furthermore, education is an investment in human resources. Because human resources from higher education have high skills and knowledge, in the context of globalization and the knowledge economy, investment (especially in higher education) is a key driver of economic development (Vasilescu, et al., 2004 ). This investment will affect the lives of people in a country (Trinh & Cicea, 2019 ), such as increasing the gross national income of a country (Soyer, et al., 2020 ), and highlight competitiveness in higher education as it enhances welfare and economic performance (Januškaitė & Užienė, 2018 ). In addition, a great deal of literature indicates that the global trend towards a highly skilled workforce can be a powerful driver, strengthening knowledge transfer, international cooperation, and innovation (Siekierski, et al., 2019 ). This trend influences countries' reputation, competitiveness, and wealth and encourages them to pay attention to the quality of life and contributions to a sustainable and balanced society (Pedro, Leitão, & Alves, 2020 ).

Most of the previous studies have only presented or studied the role of education in general. In addition, many studies have presented only the role of higher education in a specific aspect. Therefore, for a comprehensive review, this study synthesizes the main roles of higher education based on a literature review of previous studies, in order to clearly state that: Higher Education provides a foundation for development, the groundwork on which much of our economic and social well being is built. It is the key to increasing economic efficiency and social consistency (Ozturk, 2001 )

The uniqueness of this paper is that it is the first to use bibliometric analysis to assess the role of higher education for each country.

Research Methodology

The bibliometric approach involves identifying scientific knowledge in a particular field and based on the use of specialized software, to discover trends/patterns belonging to the specialists who have studied that issue (Cicea, 2020a ).

Determine the Scientific Source

This article uses statistical tools to identify publications related to the topic, then uses bibliographic analysis to study scientific documents.

In the various scientific databases in the world, the top two databases, which are superior to the others (by the number of articles, coverage area, and prestige), are Scopus (provider—Elsevier) and Web of Science (provider—Clarivate Analytics)). To avoid error-prone redundancy when analyzing scientific papers, the author only considers one database: Web of Science (Cicea, 2020b ).

Determine the Object for the Analysis Progress

Based on the advanced search engine of the Web of Science database, the author uses the keyword “higher education” in combination with the keywords “human capital”, “economical”, “Social”, and “inequality” in the title of the scientific publication. After the initial database is created, the authors refine the result (eg. Choose the documents written in English; only consider the documents in the particular field such as articles, conference proceedings, reviews, book, and book chapters; eliminate all documents written in 2021 because it is not a complete year)

Analysis and Synthesis of Evidence

Based on the created database, the analysis was performed using the Web of Science tools. The analysis considers several dimensions—The category and distribution, the temporal dimensions, the geographical dimensions. After that, the author uses VOSViewer software to draw a map of text data. The minimum occurrence number of a term is set at 10. Next, the author analyzes terms appearing on the visual map through the cluster, size, number of links, and link strength.

Then, the author uses Citespace on the filtered results from WoS with specific customizations such as “Look back year” = 15; “Time Slicing” from 1/2000 to 12/2020; g-index with k=25. In addition, the author examines possible sources such as Title, Abstract, Author Keywords, and Keyword Plus along with the Term source. Choosing the node kinds will provide each related result, which will assist the author in answering queries about the co-citation network's current references, journals, authors, academics, nations, and research trends through keywords.

Results and Discussion

Overview regarding the category and distribution of scientific literature.

The initial search result on Web of Science showed 1804 scientific bibliographies. After the refining process, there were 1530 documents related to the article’s purpose. Specifically, 1530 scientific documents cover 107 study areas. "Education Educational Research" topped the table with a staggering 54.771% (838 articles), followed by “Economics” with 9.542% (146 documents). The remaining study subjects accounting for more than 2% are presented in the Table 1 below.

We are taking a further analysis of publishing units. Journals and conference proceedings with more than 15 published documents are shown in the Fig.  1 below.

Source: Authors own conception, based on Web of Science

Publications with over 15 scientific documents.

The Temporal Aspect

Figure 2 shows the number of studies distributed between 2002 and 2020.

Source : Authors own conception, based on Web of Science

Temporal distribution of scientific documents.

As can be seen in a time distribution chart, before the 2000s, higher education issues received little attention. There are only 1 to 14 scientific papers per year (peaking in 1979). During the first eight years of the 3rd millennium, the number of scientific texts per year increased but not significantly. From 2009 onwards, there was an explosion in the number of scientific texts (31 papers in 2009 and 82 papers in 2011—almost six times more than six years earlier). After that, the number of scientific papers continuously increased and peaked at 172 papers in 2019.

The geographical Dimensions

In terms of geographical distribution of articles, it was made after the affiliation of the first author of each article (Cicea & Marinescu, 2020 ), there are 105 countries interested in higher education research. The chart below shows countries with more than 20 documents on higher education (Fig. 3 ).

Countries with over 20 scientific documents.

The US dominates the chart with 335 studies 1.75 times more than the UK - 191 studies. In general, it can be seen that countries in Europe are interested in the issue of higher education; up to 9 European countries have more than 20 research on higher education.

A more visual map of the worldwide distribution of studies is shown in Figure 4 .

Geographic distribution of scientific production.

The Scientific Terminology

The analysis uses VOSViewer software, which analyzes and maps keywords of their associations, and frequencies based on similarities and interdependencies. The following Table 2 gives information about the top keywords with a frequency greater than 15.

Each cluster consists of similar keywords and has a keyword representing that cluster (based on frequency and number of links). A visual map of each keyword and link is shown in Fig. 5 .

Source: Author own conception, based on VOSViewer

Keywords and their links.

By consider higher education as the centre, the keywords with the greatest link strength with higher education are listed in the Table 3 . For each study, keywords describe information representing the study, attracting the researchers’ attention (Zhang, 2011 ).

According to the table, there are 17 keywords strongly associated with higher education. However, up to 40% are keywords related to aspects of society, proving the great influence of higher education on society. At the top of the table is “inequality”, which is one of the issues the author will address in the next part of the study.

After identifying keyword trends, the author uses Citespaces software to analyze co-citations in each country. The slice consists of 105 nodes with 168 links; the node size represents the number of citations, the number of rings represents the number of years cited (more rings represent the number of citations spanning many years). Each color represents a year, which is described in Fig. 6 . Thus, the results show that most countries with a high number of co-citations are developed economies, having the leading universities and prestigious educational institutions such as the US, China, UK, Australia.

Source : Author’s analyze base on Citespace

Co-citation network visual map of countries.

The evaluation of scientific literature helps to identify keyword trends and find countries that are strongly educating on the issue the author is researching. At the same time, it is imperative to identify journals with high citations on higher education issues because identifying journals with high cross-citation will identify current trends of interest among scientists. Table 4 presents the top 20 journals with high citations from 2000 to 2020.

According to Table 4 , the research problem of this paper is mostly cited by journals related to higher education; there are a few that are social journals, such as the Harvard Business Review. From 2018 through 2020, this problem is not only limited to specialized journals but also mentioned in interdisciplinary journals with a citation index of 4.16 in only two years, 2018-2020; The interdisciplinary journal PLOS ONE has the potential to explode in citations in the future.

The Role of Higher Education in National Development

In some countries trying to shift their traditional economy to a more knowledgeintensive platform, experience in transforming the higher education system has much to do with development (Azman et al., 2013 ). Furthermore, higher education, and universities in particular, serve as an essential force for technological innovation and long-term economic growth in society (Zhu et al., 2018 ).

Higher Education and Human Resources

Humanity has entered the 4.0 era; knowledge has become the most important factor for economic development through the ability to improve labor productivity, which is considered a competitive advantage of the country (Porter, 1990 ). The shift of society towards a knowledge-based economy shows that knowledge drives economic growth and development (IIEP, 2007 ). Higher education is a cradle to create knowledgeable human resources to promote social development. Whether a country has a fast or slow growth rate is determined by the capacity of human knowledge resources. Therefore, higher education plays an important role in enhancing people's capacity to acquire and use knowledge (Campbell, 2011 ). Higher education can help economies keep up or keep pace with advanced technology in the world in the knowledge economy. Higher education graduates are more likely to be aware and better positioned to use new technologies. They are also more likely to develop new tools and skills themselves. Their knowledge can also improve their skills, while the greater confidence and know-how inculcated by advanced learning can generate entrepreneurship, with positive effects on creative work.

Today, when society “opens up,” the transfer of gray matter from one country to another has more optimal conditions and is seen as a trend. Moreover, qualifications are the key that opens the door (Brown & Scase, 1994 ) so that people can be recruited. As a result, obtaining a college degree increasingly resembles getting an insurance policy. Each individual is encouraged to obtain the highest degree possible in order to minimize personal risk. Thus, it can be argued that higher education provides relatively good protection against unemployment (Kivinen & Ahola, 1998 ); (Aamodt & Arnesen, 2021 ). Reaffirm that university graduates will enter society as members of “the energetic society”, which is necessary to achieve sustainable development goals (Hajer, et al., 2015 ).

Higher Education and Economic Growth

It is widely recognized that education has a significant positive effect on economic growth. Schultz argues in human capital theory that education can help accumulate people’s human capital to enhance their productivity in the labor market (Schultz, 1961 ). This argument has been confirmed by empirical research in different countries and regions (Barro & Lee, 1994 ). Higher education fosters high-quality labor to increase the productivity of the whole society and promotes technological and institutional innovation to improve production efficiency (Lucas, 1988 ); (Romer, 1990 ); (Aghion & Howitt, 1990 ). The change for human resources, technology, and institutions will transform the economic structure of that country. Therefore, all possible effects of higher education on people will ultimately impact economic development, as the labor force is one of the basic factors in production (Yang, 2009 ).

According to some previous classic studies (Barro, 1991 ; Mankiw et al., 1992 ) have shown a meaningful relationship between education and economic growth. These studies often use the number of years of schooling of the working-age population as a variable for education. The results of these studies are summarized in Table 5 .

Sustainable development has become a common goal of most countries and is a global trend towards development that can meet the present needs without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. In particular, green growth is considered important content of sustainable development, requiring growth to ensure the harmony of all three main areas: economy—society—environment, simultaneously and harmoniously solving environmental and development issues. However, in recent years, environmental degradation with a global shortage of resources has posed an unprecedented and severe threat to human development. This threat has raised people’s awareness of the need to protect the environment. In this case, the limitations of traditional GDP become apparent. On the one hand, human economic activities have positively impacted society by creating wealth; on the other hand, similar activities have brought about adverse effects by hindering the development of social productivity in many ways (Gao et al., 2019 ).

Therefore, countries move towards green growth to overcome the disadvantages brought about by the traditional growth process.

The concept of “green growth” has now been introduced by many organizations around the world. For example, the World Bank (WB) says: “Green growth is efficient in the use of natural resources; clean in minimizing pollution and environmental impacts; flexibility in adapting to natural hazards; management of the environment and natural capital in disaster prevention” (World Bank, 2012 ). According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), "green growth includes promoting economic growth and development while ensuring that natural assets continue to provide the resources and environmental services for our prosperity. For this to happen, green growth must be the catalyst for investment and innovation, the basis for sustainable growth, and new economic opportunities" (OECD, 2014 ). Thus, Green Growth emphasizes promoting economic growth while maintaining balance with the ecological environment, while Green Economy places more emphasis on the limits of the environment, human well-being, and social justice (UNITAR, 2012 )

Through previous studies, it can be confirmed that higher education plays a huge and vital role in developing a country by providing quality human resources to meet market demand and a competitive economy.

It can be summarized in Figure 6 :

Besides providing quality human resources, higher education also promotes economic development by accelerating industrial optimization and upgrading industries from labour-intensive to capital-intensive, and ultimately knowledge and technology-intensive (Min, 2017 ). The timely optimization of industrial structures is of great significance for economic progress and for ensuring the smooth and sustainable operation of the green economy, in which countries can reduce consumption of energy resources and control costs in the environment. Indeed, among the many factors that influence industrial upgrading, welltrained workers with sufficient knowledge and skills are those who can adapt well to industries where advanced technology makes a fundamental difference. Therefore, higher education, by attracting talented people who are pursuing knowledge and skills, is an essential prerequisite for industrial upgrading. In this way, higher education plays a leading role in the industrial restructuring of the economy to achieve sustainable economic growth (Gao et al., 2019 ) (Fig. 7 ).

Source : Gao et al., 2019

Mechanism of how higher education influence green GDP.

Thus, higher education is considered a bridge between the supply and demand of human resources, and universities are the source of green human resources for the labor market. Through this human resource, universities will contribute to promoting green growth by changing the way of life, production, and consumption. In addition, the highly qualified and skilled human resources from these green universities will help green the country's economic growth model towards sustainable economic development.

Higher Education and Social Issues

The ultimate purpose of investing in education is also to improve people’s living standards. Therefore, the level of local human capital and the relative importance of educational institutions are expected to improve the quality of life in an area for several reasons.

Firstly, residents with a high level of education will promote their roles in some typical local locations such as museums and theatres. Second, educated residents can facilitate the density and variety of consumer services such as restaurants, cafes, and bars that consumers desire (Waldfogel, 2008 ). It is a fact that people with higher education also have more opportunities for political activities (Milligan et al., 2004 ) and can elect better government officials and help build clean cities with low pollution and crime. In addition, Lochner ( 2004 ) emphasized the role of education as an investment in human capital, increasing future legal employment opportunities and deterring participation in crime. If human capital adds more marginal return to work than crime, then human capital investment and schooling should reduce crime. Therefore, strategies to improve schooling (or schooling efficiency) should reduce most types of street crime and are more likely to be more tolerant of others than themselves (Florida, 2002 ). However, certain types of white collar crime (e.g. embezzlement, fraud) may increase with education if they sufficiently reward skills learned in school (Hjalmarsson & Lochner, 2012 ). Also, when discussing the issue of education level and crime, in a study by Ehrlich ( 1975 ), the author found that it is not necessary to imply that education reduces crime. Because, First, unobserved personal traits such as patience or risk aversion may directly influence schooling and criminal decisions. Individuals who choose more education (even after conditioning on observable characteristics) are likely to choose less crime, regardless of their education level, in which case regression-based estimates cannot determine causality. Second, exploiting differences in crime and education between states or local communities can also lead to biased estimates. Governments can choose between funding the police force or quality public schools, which often creates a false positive correlation between education and crime. Alternatively, unobserved community characteristics may directly affect the costs or benefits of education and crime. Third, reverse causality is another important issue. Individuals who plan to be heavily involved in crime (for example, because they are particularly good at crime, enjoy crime, or live in areas with many illegal opportunities) may choose to drop out of school at a young age (Lochner, 2004 ). Arrests or detentions related to juvenile delinquency may also cause some young people to drop out of school (Hjalmarsson, 2008 ). Under certain circumstances, for those who do not have the opportunity to access education to generate wages, committing crimes seems to be a reluctant way of survival. Therefore, providing disadvantaged urban youth with better schools can substantially reduce juvenile and adult crime, even if it has little effect on traditional education outcomes (Cullen et al, 2006 ).

In addition, higher education is a “measure” of social distance between quintiles. Some authors (Moretti, 2004 ) analyze the benefits of investing in higher education, while other authors (Ferrante, 2009 ) analyze the link between education and life satisfaction. Education has an effect on income (Psacharopoulos & Patrinos, 2004 ); (Gregorio & Lee, 2002 ), and higher education leads to higher incomes, and education is the most powerful tool to reduce income inequality (Stephens, Markus, & Fryberg, 2012 ); (Abdullah, Doucouliagos, & Manning, 2015 ); (Stephens, Markus, & Fryberg, 2012 ). Thus, there is a significant link between education and inequality (Marshall & Fukao, 2019 ). Through the universalization of higher education, each country strives to promote quality of life and social justice, minimizing socio-cultural differences (Kothari, 1996 ). At the same time, quality education leads to happiness (Samali, 2010 ) because education has a positive role in increasing quality of life (Bauer, et al., 2018 ). However, it must be understood that individuals with more education do not earn more just because of the diploma they have but because of the quality of the work they are doing. Because of the quality of their work, they earn more (Gillies, 2011 ). Undeniably, much evidence attests to higher education graduates' continual ‘employment opportunities’ (Schomburg & Teichler, 2006 ).

This paper presents an accurate and specific document approach to research through the Vos viewer tool. However, it would be remiss if this study did not address its limitations. The first refers to the selection of the analyzed scientific knowledge database. From this point of view, this is limited, using only the WOS database. However, other databases may contain relevant literature in the field, which may yield additional information (Cicea & Marinescu, 2021 ).

In addition, the author presents the role of higher education in the creation of human resources and considers higher education as insurance for job search; Higher education also plays an important role in green growth and addressing social inequality, especially among income groups.

In addition, in this study, the author only presents slices of the role of higher education in the development of a country, so the study does not go into specific aspects. However, a new research direction will be explored in the future when an issue is approached in this study: cost sharing. A current issue in many countries is university autonomy. This trend is considered inevitable in global education, a "revolution" to fundamentally and comprehensively renovate higher education. However, when the university is autonomous, many schools simultaneously increase tuition fees, causing society to fear that it will increase the pressure on study costs on the shoulders of learners. This predicament results from the management level and the educational institution's confused ideas, which conflate university autonomy with self-sufficiency in resources; these are two distinct issues. University autonomy does not mean that universities have to be self-sufficient regarding resources and funding. The primary funding source for public schools is from the state budget. Therefore, the State should not cut the budget of autonomous universities, but on the contrary, should increase budget support for schools that successfully implement the policy of university autonomy; considering them as worthy places to focus on investing to quickly improve the quality of training, helping the schools soon become essential national schools. When it comes to increasing tuition fees, regardless of the country, public schools have a principle that tuition fees must be fair, creating learning opportunities for everyone. Therefore, the tuition fee is usually limited, not increasing indefinitely, but should be based on the average income of the people (Newsnpr, 2022 ). Besides, when the labor market is increasingly expanding, human capital flight from one country to another is becoming a trend. Therefore, it is required that higher education make breakthroughs in reforming training forms to meet competitiveness and adapt to particular circumstances. Especially when the whole world has just passed through the COVID -19 pandemic with many changes from awareness to action. Thus, this study contributes both in terms of literature as well as a premise to delve into specific aspects of higher education and the development of a country.

To promote the role of higher education further in the future, the author proposes some recommendations:

First, universities need to strengthen cooperation, coordinate and share ideas on scientific research; propose to state management agencies appropriate policies to support, encourage and promote green growth; promote cooperation in research, development, testing, and technology transfer for green growth. Because each university has its strengths, linking universities in the process of research, development, testing, and technology transfer will contribute to enhancing the role and position of universities in the process of participating in green growth; strengthen the exchange of lecturers, researchers, and students in the field of green technology, which should be focused on areas with great potential such as energy or environmental technology. At the same time, strengthen the research, teaching, training, and learning capacity of lecturers, researchers, and students, contributing to training high-quality human resources for green growth.

Second, connect training with practice: Enterprise semester, jointly build and evaluate training programs, invite experts from enterprises to teach. Enterprise recruiting personnel is the output of the university; together with career counseling; The university supports personnel training for businesses.

Third, internationalize the university's teaching staff and curricula to meet the competitiveness of countries with strengths in higher education.

Fourth, connect brand communication and sharing messages and images: communicate corporate brands in academic spaces of the university, on university communication channels; organize events and spread the brand to the university's learners.

Fifth, connect and share social responsibility: fund facilities; academic grants; sponsor student activities; fund technology development

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Trinh, N.T.H. Higher Education and Its Role for National Development. A Research Agenda with Bibliometric Analysis. Interchange 54 , 125–143 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10780-023-09493-9

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THE ROLE OF EDUCATION IN NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT

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National Development Delivers: And How! And How?

In this section, national development delivers: and how and how , cid faculty working paper no. 398.

Lant Pritchett  May 2021

Core dual ideas of early development economics and practice were that (a) national development was a four-fold transformation of countries towards: (i) a more productive economy, (ii) a more responsive state, (iii) more capable administration, and (iv) a shared identity and equal treatment of citizens and (b) this four-fold transformation of national development would lead to higher levels of human wellbeing. The second idea is strikingly correct: development delivers. National development is empirically necessary for high wellbeing (no country with low levels of national development has high human wellbeing) and also empirically sufficient (no country with high national development has low levels of human wellbeing). Three measures of national development: productive economy, capable administration, and responsive state, explain (essentially) all of the observed variation in an omnibus indicator of wellbeing, the Social Progress Index, which is based on 58 distinct non-economic indicators. How national development delivers on wellbeing varies, in three ways. One, economic growth is much more important for achieving wellbeing at low versus high levels of income. Two, economic growth matters more for “basic needs” than for other dimensions of wellbeing (like social inclusiveness or environmental quality). Three, state capability matters more for wellbeing outcomes that depend on public production than on private goods (and for some wellbeing indicators, like physical safety, for which growth doesn’t matter at all). While these findings may seem too common sense to be worth a paper, national development--and particularly economic growth—is, strangely, under severe challenge as an important and legitimate objective of action within the development industry.

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The Role of Education in National Development

Education refers to the field of study that deals mainly with teaching and learning methods in schools. The primary aim of education is to promote a person’s overall development. It is also a source of its evident advantages for a more prosperous and happier existence.

Education has the potential to improve society as a whole. It helps create a community where individuals know their rights and responsibilities. Education is a learning and cultural process where people may acquire cognitive ability, physical abilities, and values and beliefs. These abilities enable us to be decent citizens.

National Development refers to a country’s ability to improve its citizens’ living standards. National development may be accomplished through meeting fundamental livelihood needs and providing work, among other things. Growth, progress, and good change are all part of the development process. Therefore, growth is a positive indicator.

One of the components of national development includes the development and urbanization of rural areas. Another is the increment in agricultural outputs to help eradicate poverty. Others include the enlargement of economic knowledge and proper growth handling in urban areas.

There are two elements to development-growth in the economy or a rise in people’s income:

Literacy, health, and the provision of public services are all examples of social development.

Education aids production by providing men and women with the latest scientific and technological information. To improve national income, education must link to productivity, the entire output of final products and services in real terms.

Making S.U.P.W. (Socially Useful Productive Work) and vocational education, especially at the secondary school level, an intrinsic element of general education to satisfy the demands of industry, agriculture, and commerce would help the national economy.

Education has also improved national development by enhancing university-level scientific and technical education and research, focusing on agriculture and related sciences.

Education has aided national development through talent and virtue development. The nurturing of abilities and practical qualities is the cornerstone of a nation’s development.

The indices of national growth include an awakened mind, correct information, advanced skills, and desired attitudes. Education aids in developing latent abilities or aptitudes to harness the process of national and personal growth.

Developing skills and values through an appropriate educational curriculum undoubtedly adds to a nation’s success. As a result, education is viewed as a tool for harnessing abilities and values for the overall development of a country.

Education helps nurture and improve students’ writing skills as they are taught to write in schools, which equips them with the necessary skills to be ardent writers, editors, and the like. Although, with the advent of technology, there are now websites where people can seek help with their writing projects, such as the best custom writing service .

Physical, cerebral, social, emotional, moral, spiritual, and aesthetic developments of the individual personality are all goals of education. National development is not feasible without personal growth. Individual development includes:

● The development of self-confidence. ● The development of scientific temperament. ● The attainment of self-sufficiency. ● A sense of duty. ● Discipline and decency. ● A sense of dedication. ● The promotion of social and ethical values. ● The cultivation of social efficiency. ● The promotion of social and moral values.

As a result, education aids individuals in creating and cultivating the attributes mentioned above, which are necessary for a nation’s revival and progress. Therefore, all sectors of the population should have access to education.

The royal route to national progress is supposed to be modernization. Education contributes to national development by instilling curiosity, suitable interests, attitudes, and values and developing necessary abilities such as independent study and the ability to analyze and evaluate correctly. It also assists by using new teaching techniques and altering the composition of the intelligentsia and educated individuals from all walks of life. Furthermore, it emphasizes vocational education, science-based education, and research as development catalysts. These, in turn, transform into the development of a country.

Internationalism is critical for national development, such as national integration. It can be encouraged through education by emphasizing diverse nations’ significant contributions to humanity’s progress and reinstating the right viewpoints in textbooks by removing malicious content about other civilizations.

It can also be achieved by assisting in developing a global outlook and eliminating negative attitudes among pupils toward different communities or races throughout the universe.

Therefore, education is crucial in achieving national development. Education is an excellent vehicle for attaining actual national development. A nation cannot remain oblivious to its role in education.

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