Linking higher education and economic development

This is a synthesis of the findings from three international case studies on the relationship between higher education and economic development. The three case studies are Finland,South Korea, and the state of North Carolina in the United States. This sample of country case studies was chosen for several reasons. First, all of them reflect, to a greater or lesser degree, examples of well developed higher education systems comprising different types of institutions with varying impacts on development. Second, the higher education system in Finland and South Korea, but to a lesser extent in North Carolina, is characterised by high levels of participation – in fact, the highest in the world. Third, there is, in all three cases in higher education, evidence of a strong and close relationship between education and economic development in general, and higher education and economic development in particular. In all three systems a rethink of the major economic policies were accompanied by a deliberate attempt to link higher education to economic development