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Economic studies that attempt to explain or describe the process of economic development in Latin America often overlook the participation of youth. Such studies generally address themselves to such problems as capital formation, investments in natural and human resources, foreign trade, population, and agriculture. Problems faced by the youth within the development process are usually oversimplified or treated as insignificant. For example, the works of Higgins, Kindleberger, Lewis, and Myrdal cover a vast number of economic development topics. But Myrdal's work is the only one that even lightly dwells on the problems faced by youth in the development process. Yet it is today's youth who will be tomorrow's participants in the development process and it is today's youth who must be counted on to solve the existing problems experienced in the development process—shortage of savings, shortage of educational and social services, housing shortages, and all the other problems inherent in a developing country.

Education perpetuates inequality directly, in that messages distributed by schools are linked to student social class. A specific focus on the response of white working‐class and minority students' attitudes to school (in the USA) reveals that elites maintain themselves not only through their own education but also through the education of others; and that those at the bottom contribute to the maintenance of class structure through their own creative response to wider ranging inequalities, and the way these inequalities are mediated in schools.

From December, 1969 to March, 1970 a sample survey was conducted throughout Chile to determine individual utilization and expenditures on health services. As a by‐product of this survey, information was obtained on individual schooling and income by age, occupation, and region of residence. This paper analyzes the latter information. The sample consists of 3,839 Chilean males who were heads of households and who were employed during 1969.

In the past two decades, Chile has implemented three reform strategies that shaped its educational decentralization process, each motivated by different goals. In the 1980s, during the military regime, an economic model structured a voucher system that created incentives for parents to choose schools for their children. In theory, bad schools would improve in quality or go out of business. The second reform began in 1990 and was embedded in the transition from autocratic to democratic government. Sociologists were the intellectual authors of this initiative which focused on improving the working conditions of teachers. In 1994, the third strategy began with educational researchers focusing attention on the classroom effectiveness and the need for better instructional materials and improvements in the teaching/learning process. The continued study of educational decentralization in Chile is important because it represents the only nation in the world with a nation‐wide voucher system.

The technological revolution is creating new goods and services and altering how and where they are produced. One of the principal issues for all countries is how these new technologies will affect employment and the composition of skills demand. Surveys the literature to attempt to answer three main questions: to what degree are the new technologies becoming diffused around the world? How much do they reduce, or increase employment? And do they reduce, or increase, the skills required in the labour force? Touches briefly on implications for educational policy. The survey suggests that because of new technologies, new organizations of production, changing employment conditions and the development of new sectors of production, the complementarity of general, formal schooling, in‐plant training and learning‐by‐doing to capital investment are increasing over time and that general schooling plus on‐the‐job training is more complementary to new technologies than is vocational schooling. The former combination is more likely to give workers the flexibility they need in such changing conditions.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relative academic effectiveness of vocational education in three countries with early tracking systems: Austria, Croatia, and Hungary.

The authors use an instrumental variables approach to estimate vocational education’s relative academic effectiveness in terms of achievement on an international test, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s Program of International Student Assessment (PISA), and two possible indicators of non-cognitive outcomes – self-efficacy in mathematics and intrinsic motivation in mathematics, both also available from the PISA student survey.

The results show few, if any, differences in student gains from attending the vocational track in secondary school as opposed to the academic track. Specifically, the results show that attending the vocational or academic track results in similar achievement gains in the tenth grade and generally similar gains in self-efficacy and motivation in mathematics.

The study is unique because in the three countries, the authors can use a fuzzy regression discontinuity approach based on school systems’ age entrance date rules to estimate the gain in test scores over an academic year and to compare the gain for students in the vocational and academic tracks. The results contradict almost all other studies by showing that in these countries student academic gains in vocational education are about the same as in the academic track.

This chapter offers a survey of education development in Sub-Saharan Africa, dynamics of global forces and Sub-Saharan African context. First, the regional context of Sub-Saharan Africa is surveyed. This is followed first by an overview of the incoming tide of global forces impinging on education in the sub-continent, followed by a discussion of education developments in Sub-Saharan Africa as co-shaped by contextual contours. It transpires that the contextual realities of sub-Sahara Africa not only have a powerful mediating role on the impact of global forces but also are in their own right an agency in shaping the education response of societies in the region. The other common thread running through the chapter is the lack of knowledge explicating the interrelationship between education and societal context in the region. This lacunus is evident from the fact that no country in the region has ever been included in international surveys such as the TALIS survey, to lack of research on, for example, informal settlements or the informal economy and its intersection with education. Such research, when placed on the Comparative and International Education research agenda, will not only be of significance to Sub-Sahara Africa, but also to the entire world, many aspects of the contextual architecture of the region are becoming increasingly evident world-wide.

In this chapter I argue that education cannot escape being influenced by the economic, political and cultural effects of globalization. Through an examination of the policies of national governments, agenda of international organizations such as the World Bank and UNESCO, the global practices of privatization, accountability and managerialism, I demonstrate that education is being used as a tool of neo-liberal economic reform, a process that increases inequalities and marginalizes the already unheard voices. I argue that any analysis of globalization and its impact on higher education requires stepping back from all interactions and practices and asking basic questions about what these terms imply, why they function the way they do, and whose interests they serve. A critical analysis of the transformation of universities and thus the knowledge produced is essential as it affects and infiltrates our very consciousness. I argue that while higher education is being restructured under the neo-liberal economic rationality it is important for educators to find out what will be gained and what will be lost before going ahead with such restructuring. I also contend that the neo-liberal economic rationality of globalization has framed the restructuring of education in such a manner that its function has changed from production of knowledge to production and management of wealth. As a result of accepting the dominant discourse of the globalization agenda without much critical analysis or debate regarding its consequences, education has lost its basic function of producing democratic citizens.

There is no argument among serious researchers that a mongoloid stock first colonized the New World from Asia. Nor is there controversy about the fact that these continental pioneers used the Bering Land Bridge that then connected the Asian Far East with Alaska.– Gerald F. Shields, et al.American Journal of Genetics (1992)

Reports that although the results of the World Bank’s programme of policy research on vocational and technical education and training are available in published form, the process through which these publications are developed is known only to those directly involved. Asserts that the process of policy research is as important as the product. Reviews the policy study programme and research conducted or sponsored by the World Bank and other international agencies. Reviews the literature and addresses key policy areas with recent information.