THE IMPACT OF HIGHER EDUCATION ON HUMAN DEVELOPMENT

Yazdan Ebrahimi Soviz1, Zahra Chavooshi2
1Assistant Professor, Department of Economic Higher Education, Institute for Research and Planning in Higher Education. The corresponding author’ e-mail: yebrahimi@irphe.ir.
2Master Student of Higher Education Management, Institute for Research and Planning in Higher Education. z.chavoshi@gmail.com

Abstract

In recent decades, developing countries have made great efforts to achieve desirable conditions and reduced their distance with developed countries. Some of them have been helpful and some others are still in a vicious circle of poverty and underdevelopment.

Human development encompasses all the dimensions of political, social, and cultural activities. In this approach, essence of human development is a process of strengthening human capabilities. Acquiring knowledge and access to the resources are very important to achieve the desirable standards of life, including everything from health, family, education, employment, wealth, safety, security, freedom. One of the main characteristics of human development is its emphasis on human capital. Human capital and skill formation are important elements for productive employment and overcoming poverty.

Education is one of the most important aspects of human development.  It helps to increase the status and capabilities of human. Also, education was seen as central to sustained growth and it is an important factor of economic development. It is in turn essential to human development and education is the key to social and economic development, to peace and stability, and to democracy. Education has a major impact on health outcomes. Investments in education must be significantly increased.

Today, higher education is a highly important sector. Higher education transfers existing knowledge tostudents (through education) and also it creates new knowledge that result to employment, increase in wealth, and economic growth. Researches show that educated people make better choices about their life. Higher education provide opportunity and can change the lives of high school graduates and they make more money, stimulate the economy and create healthier life. The higher education may be the single most important investment young people can make in their futures. Also, many studies have proved the high rate of return in investment on higher education.

This paper is used indicators of education, life expectancy, gross national income and higher education to compare 128 countries and their effect on human development. Also, this paper considers (i) a structuralequation modeling in research; (ii) it proposes a model for measuring the extent of human development with respect to the selected indicators, and (iii) Finally, this paper uses structural equations tomeasure the effect of higher education on human development

Keywords
: Education, Higher education, Human development, Gross national income, Life expectancy.


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CITATION: Abstracts & Proceedings of SOCIOINT 2019- 6th International Conference on Education, Social Sciences and Humanities, 24-26 June 2019- İstanbul, TURKEY

ISBN: 978-605-82433-6-1