New Financing Will Support Cambodia in Improving Higher Education for Industrial Development  The World Bank’s Board of Executive Directors approved today US$90 million in financing to support Cambodia’s efforts in improving the quality of higher education and research in the country and broadening access to higher education for disadvantaged students. “We welcome World Bank support in higher education and research, which is well aligned with the priorities of our Industrial Development Policy for 2015-2025,” said H.E. Senior Minister, Aun Pornmoniroth, Ministry of Economy and Finance. “This project will help us establish a holistic strategy for higher education development and enable Cambodian graduates to meet the rapid demands and increasing opportunities – for mobility and technology transfer – of the ASEAN Economic Community and beyond.”

For Better Returns than the U.S. Stock Market, Invest in Education

We all know that education is a sound investment, but just how solid is it? We set to find out, with a comprehensive review that covered trends and patterns from a database of 1,120 estimates in 139 countries spanning nearly seven decades. View full story…

Who Is Ready for The Coming Wave of Automation?  There are few terms as emotive, and few subjects that elicit as much angst, within societies as that of automation. This might seem odd, given that automation technologies have long been present in our factories and offices. The advent, however, of highly intelligent technologies such as robotics and those based on the   assembly-line types of tasks, has added a new dimension to discussions of future automation—namely the prospect that large numbers of roles performed today by humans, wearing white or blue collars, will be eliminated by machines…

The United States is way behind other countries on robot ‘readiness …Washington Post… “They are considering relaxing exam pressure,” Harry Patrinos, practice manager for education, East Asia and Pacific at the World Bank, is quoted as saying in the ABB report. Economists say such efforts are aimed at training children and young adults to value independent thinking over regurgitation — a …

Education is the key for the UK to address the challenge of automation  …Indeed, Harry Patrinos, practice manager for education, East Asia and Pacific with the World Bank suggests in the report that the countries most affected by automation “will be the emerging, middle-income countries that are preparing …

Estimating the Effects of Educational System Contraction: The Case of China’s Rural School Closure Initiative  We estimate the impact of educational infrastructure consolidation on educational attainment using the case of China’s rural primary school closure policies in the early 2000s. The rationale for consolidation policies is that economies of scale will enable higher quality education, but distance to school increases for children in villages with school closures. We use data from a large household survey covering 728 villages in 7 provinces in China, and exploit variation in villages’ year of school closure and children’s ages at closure to identify the causal impact of school closure. For children exposed to closure during their primary school ages, we find an average decrease of 0.60 years of schooling for girls after age 15, but no significant effect for boys. Negative effects strengthen with time since closure. There is no evidence of a differential trend in educational attainment between individuals in villages with school closure and those in villages without, as indicated by an analysis using older cohorts beyond primary school age when closure occurred. Different effects by gender may be related to greater sensitivity of girls’ enrollment to distance and greater responsiveness of boys’ enrollment to quality…

Rethinking Vocational Education in the Philippines: Does It Really Lead to Higher Wages?  Vocational education is often seen as a means of enhancing the earning potential of disadvantaged workers — those with lower levels of general formal education, or without adequate skills to integrate into the labour market. International evidence on the effects of vocational education on earnings is mixed. An earlier study on the Philippines indicated that this type of education can increase the wages of low-educated workers. However, by using a more recent household survey and employing alternative statistical techniques, this paper finds contrasting evidence. The new estimates indicate that workers who obtained vocational education do not earn significantly more than those who did not. The differences in estimates imply that the wage effects of vocational education among Filipino workers remain unclear. Therefore, caution must be exercised while making policies that aim to promote vocational education as an alternative to general formal education…