Capstone or deadweight? Inefficiency, duplication and inequity in South Africa's tertiary education system, 1910--93

Johannes Wolfgang Fedderke (), Raphael de Kadt and John Luiz

Cambridge Journal of Economics, 2003, vol. 27, issue 3, pages 377-400

Abstract: This paper presents time series on South African tertiary education. The data series presented cover inputs and outputs for the university, technical training and teacher training systems. Modern growth theory has emphasised the importance of human capital, though empirical studies have attempted to isolate human capital impacts through single aggregate measures that capture only a quantity of human capital dimension. While data analysis in the present study is exploratory in nature, we show that strong quality differentials exist both within and between different parts of the tertiary education system. The methodological implication for growth studies is that fully accounting for both the quantity and quality of human capital in aggregate human capital measures thus faces significant measurement difficulties. The data also establish that discrimination in the South African tertiary education was not simply a question of underresourcing of Black institutions. Quality of output was low, but attaining it was frequently very expensive. Copyright 2003, Oxford University Press.

Date: 2003

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oup:cambje:v:27:y:2003:i:3:p:377-400

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.oup.co.uk/journals

Access Statistics for this article

Cambridge Journal of Economics is edited by Katharine Norman

More articles in Cambridge Journal of Economics from Oxford University Press
Address: Oxford University Press, Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP, UK
Series data maintained by Christopher F. Baum ().