(Mis-)Understanding Education Externalities

This article critically evaluates the current state of research on education externalities. It occurs that much of the confusion regarding their magnitude results from conceptual misunderstandings pertaining to their nature. The essay distinguishes the concepts education, teaching, and knowledge. Whereas pure teaching yields externalities on the primary and secondary level, only the generation of knowledge may produce the spillovers which are typically linked to the tertiary level. The accumulation of education itself does not have such an effect. Education is argued to be a private good with well defined property rights. Individuals may exploit those and provide the production sector with the efficient amount of human capital. Following this rationale, it is demonstrated that empirical studies, contrasting estimations of private and social returns to education, are unsuitable to substantiate the existence of externalities. As a consequence, subsidies to tertiary programs are called into question.