آموزش و پرورش و رشد اقتصادی در مالزی: مسائل مربوط به داده های آموزش و پرورش

Human capital or education has become one of the central issues in the study of economic development. The existing literature suggests that human capital, especially education, is an important component of economic growth. This paper explores the issues of Malaysia education data. Despite some issues and data quality problems, Malaysian education datasets are highly correlated for both secondary and tertiary education data. This paper also tests the effect of different datasets on education and growth relationship. The results are very similar suggesting that Malaysian education datasets are reliable. The results are robust regardless of education measure. All datasets lead to similar conclusion; education is negatively related to economic growth.

Human capital or education has become one of the central issues in the study of economic development. The existing literature suggests that human capital, especially education, is an important component of economic growth. However, this hypothesis is often supported by little empirical evidence. One of key issues in researching the relationship between education and economic growth is differences in the definition and measurement of human capital, particularly in the measurement of educational variables. Some studies use school enrolment rates or enrolment ratios, the literacy rate or the average years of schooling as a proxy of human capital. Other studies use human skills, physical abilities and life expectancy as a measure of human capital (see Cipolla, 1969; Houston, 1983 and Leeuwen, 2007). In most studies, human capital is proxied by years of schooling and the school enrolment rate. Barro and Lee, 1993; 2010, used the years of schooling as a measure of human capital. The use of enrolment rates as a proxy for human capital has statistical validity or it can be quantified but it fails to capture education quality. Another criticism regarding this measurement arises because students are outside the labour force (Permani, 2009:6). Therefore, their contribution to economic growth is difficult to justify, and if any, it can be considered to be very small. In fact, Pritchett, 2001 found that both primary and secondary school enrolments are negatively related to human capital growth rate. The objectives of this paper are twofold:

This paper explores the issues of Malaysia education data. The data are available in various government reports. Nevertheless, the quality of data is questionable. Among the government official reports, Malaysian Educational Statistics is the most comprehensive. This paper checks the reliability of Malaysian education data with well-known international datasets. The datasets are highly correlated for both secondary and tertiary education data. This paper also tests the effect of different datasets on education and growth relationship. The results are very similar suggesting that Malaysian Educational Statistics data are reliable. Despite some issues and data quality problems, the results are consistent with WDI and Barro and Lee, 2010, datasets. The results are robust regardless of education measure. All datasets lead to similar conclusion; education is negatively related to economic growth. Negative relationship between education and economic growth is not a new finding. Several factors have been highlighted in the literature in relation to this issue. First, education may not effective in influencing productivity. Some educated people might be working in illegal sector that will affect growth in the future (Pritchett, 2001). Second, education is not a factor of production that contributes to growth in the short-run (Benhabib and Spiegel, 1994:160). Although this is not a new issue worldwide, but it is interesting for future research, particularly to investigate does education really has a negative effect on growth in Malaysia.