HUMAN CAPITAL

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HUMAN CAPITAL DEVELOPMENT

Human capital theory focuses on an assumption that education is very basic and needed to increase production capacity. Shortly, human capital theory believes that an educated human is a productive human. Human capital theory emphasises how education can help workers to be more productive and efficient of by increasing the level of cognitive ability. The provision of formal education is considered as an investment in human capital, similar or even more valuable than physical investment (Woodhall, 1997). Human capital theory concludes that investment in human capital will lead to greater economic output but this theory is sometimes contradictory. In the past, the economic strengths mostly depend on physical assets such as land, factories and equipment. Labor is necessary, but physical investments increase business value. Modern economists agree that education and health are keys to improving human capital and increase economic output (Becker, 1983).

Human Capital and Global Challenge

Economic ideology sets out with a goal, in example, trying to explain the secrets of success (and failure) of a nation: why and how a nation managed to reach economic growth and generates prosperity. The economic methodological basis believes that the concept of human capital is only sensible and has a practical implication if understood in the whole framework. For that reason, it is very interesting to see the significance and meaning of the concept of human capital in the global context.

Theoritically, it is not difficult to adapt the global context into the concept of human capital. Global context does not make the concept of human capital irrelevant but requires a certain quality in understanding human capital. In natio...

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...reorientation of education to make it more cosmopolitan is not an easy job. Politically, making more education-oriented cosmopolitan human will confront us to a group of human which are nationalists, who see education as a process to produce patriotic citizens. People will be very skeptical toward education reorientation. For those, the framework of cosmopolitan education will change vision and attitudes to a very normative way and make it impossible to measure and standardize the result of education processes. Actually, it is not difficult to respond to the various criticisms of the cosmopolitan education. Politically, there is no contradiction between the idea of cosmopolitanism and nationalism. Cosmopolitanism and nationalism are not two opposite polar in a continuum (Fine, 2007). The vision of cosmopolitanism can live side by side with the spirit of nationalism.

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