Publication Type
Working Paper
Version
publishedVersion
Publication Date
11-2009
Abstract
Universities were first established in Europe around the twelfth century, while primary schools did not appear until the nineteenth. This paper accounts for this phenomenon using a political economy model of educational change on who are educated (the elite or the masses) and what is taught (general or specific/vocational education). A key assumption is that general education is more effective than specific education in enhancing one’s skills in a broad range of tasks, including political rent-seeking. Its findings suggest that specific education for the masses is compatible with the elite rule, while mass general education is not, which refines the conventional association between education and democracy.
Keywords
General Education, Specific Education, Elite Education, Mass Education, Long-Run Development.
Discipline
Behavioral Economics | Economics | Higher Education
Research Areas
Applied Microeconomics
First Page
1
Last Page
36
Publisher
SMU Economics and Statistics Working Paper Series, No. 13-2009
City or Country
Singapore
Citation
HUANG, Fali.
Why Did Universities Precede Primary Schools? A Political Economy Model of Educational Change. (2009). 1-36.
Available at: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/soe_research/1306
Copyright Owner and License
Authors
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Comments
Published in Economic Inquiry, 2012, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1465-7295.2010.00308.x