Higher education, employment and economic growth: Exploring the interactions

This article interrogates the impact and nature of South Africa's post-apartheid economic growth performance through the lens of human capital investment with a particular emphasis on higher education. The South African economy has been characterised by a skills-biased trajectory, ensuring jobs...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Development southern Africa (Sandton, South Africa) South Africa), 2016-05, Vol.33 (3), p.312-327
Main Authors: Bhorat, Haroon, Cassim, Aalia, Tseng, David
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Apartheid
Bias
Capital investments
Cobb-Douglas production function
Continuing education
Economic growth
Employment
growth
Growth factors
Higher education
Human capital
Job training
labour
Post-apartheid era
Production
Productivity
School dropouts
Skills
Vocational education
vocational training
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Summary:This article interrogates the impact and nature of South Africa's post-apartheid economic growth performance through the lens of human capital investment with a particular emphasis on higher education. The South African economy has been characterised by a skills-biased trajectory, ensuring jobs for the better educated. By differentiating between tertiary and vocational training, we find that further education and training (FET) graduates are almost as likely to be employed as school leavers without higher education. We analyse the extent to which the educational attainments of labour affect the nature and trajectory of economic growth in South Africa, by estimating Olley and Pakes' two-stage regression on a modified Cobb-Douglas production function. The results indicate that the degree cohort contributes to economic growth whilst other higher education institutions, including FET colleges, do not productively contribute to economic growth.
ISSN:0376-835X
1470-3637
DOI:10.1080/0376835X.2016.1161501