The Knowledge Economy: An Idea Whose Time Has Come? or Gone?

Kenneth Roberts ()
Additional contact information
Kenneth Roberts: University of Liverpool

Chapter Chapter 1 in Higher Education and Work in the Knowledge Economy, 2025, pp 1-21 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract The knowledge economy began as an idea about the future. During the second half of the twentieth century, it became ‘here and now’, with four sturdy foundations. These are the conviction that investment in research and development could accelerate innovation and progress; the transition into a post-industrial age in Western countries; treating education as investment in human capital; then the micro-electronics revolution. The knowledge economy was exciting and welcomed while highly educated young people could be absorbed into high-skilled, high-salary knowledge jobs. Scepticism and disillusion have spread in the twenty-first century as more and more higher education graduates in all parts of the world have found themselves over-qualified and under-employed on entering the labour market.

Keywords: Education; Human capital; Microelectronics; Post-industrialism; Research and development (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

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: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:sprchp:978-3-031-80618-6_1

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/9783031806186

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-031-80618-6_1

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Springer Books from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().