Higher education, employment and economic growth: exploring the interactions

Abstract

The purpose of this report is to interrogate 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 neoclassical theory of endogenous growth suggests that education has a profound impact on an economy's growth trajectory that may result in a derived labour-demand appetite for skilled labour. This pattern, in turn, becomes crucial in defining and characterising the returns to households and their members on the basis of their human capital attributes. Understanding the relationship and impact between education and growth at both levels is thus a vital lesson for making informed policy decisions about growth and welfare distribution.