Educational Resources: Saturation or Satiety?

Mark Agranovich - Candidate of Sciences in Economics, Director of the Research Center for Monitoring and Statistics of Education, Federal Institute for the Development of Education, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration.Address: Bld. 9-1, Chernyakhovskogo Str., 125319 Moscow, Russian Federation. E-mail: agranovich-ml@ranepa.ruThe article explores the methodological issues of education system evaluation. Such evaluation, based on the comparative analysis of national and regional education systems, is an important source of information for education policy design and implementation through educational development programs. The existing approaches to and methods of education system evaluation are discussed. It is shown that they are based on internal indicators, not those perceived by end users or the effects external to the system. Even though there have been some objective reasons for using such approach, it remains unclear to what extent its results reflect the educational outcomes for the end users― that is, individuals, society, and economy? Statistical analysis methods are applied to OECD education statistics to investigate the relations between the education indicators characterizing the level of educational attainment, education accessibility, and the amount and quality of the resources involved, on the one hand, and the outcome effects for individuals, society, and economy. Where such relations are observed, they tend to be non-smooth and only manifest themselves up to a certain point in the vast majority of cases. Such cessation of growth in the outcome indicators that happens after achieving certain levels of resources involved, educational attainment, and other education indicators can be described as oversaturation or satiety effect. Inferences about the limitations and conditions of applying education indicators in education system evaluation are drawn from the findings.