I’ve been doing some research related to international aid
for another project, and I started thinking about international aid and
education. Aid Data, whose goal is to make aid more transparent and improve the
quality of research on aid allocation, has a searchable database of aid
activities around the world. Users can search data based on donor, recipient,
purpose, activity, and other parameters. Education is one of 25 purpose groups,
and within education there are 53 activity categories. A search of
international aid in 2010 for education projects revealed twelve pages of
results, with project commitments ranging from as little as less than $100 to
over $740,000,000. The biggest expenditure in 2010 was a project in India for a
second elementary education project funded by the World Bank – International Development
Association ($742,953,164).
I also started thinking about “failed states” and was
curious about international aid funding education projects. I searched development
aid for education projects in 2010 in the top 15 “most failed states” based on
the annual ranking by “Foreign Policy”. This search returned 25 projects,
ranging from $500 commitments to $93,387,942. The most common donors were
Norway, India, the United States, and the World Bank. The top two biggest
commitments were from the United States to Afghanistan for higher education and
basic education. Three questions came to mind: 1) why do international donors
commit so much money to education in other countries, especially in failed
states, 2) are there negative consequences of international aid for education,
and 3) are these education systems successful?
I believe donors fund education systems in foreign countries
because they believe it will create social change. An educated populace could
lead to economic development, a stable political climate, and gains in human
capital at the individual level. When public education was first expanding in
the U.S. in the 1800s, David Labaree believes that the goals were for democratic
equality first, and then for social efficiency. It seems that these are the
main goals when funding a new education system in a “failed state”. A potential
problem with this focus is that it appears to focus on aggregate results,
instead of the individual. For example, education is important because of
democratic and economic gains, instead of the capabilities and functionings of
the individual. It would be interesting to examine this situation in more
detail.
