State and Public Education:The New Human Capital Theory Perspective

Over the past five decades the economic literature on public education has been dominated with research following the functionalism paradigm,in particular studies using the human capital theory to define and explain the function and evolution of public education.We extend existing economic theories and propose a new analytical framework, i.e.,the new human capital theory.The theory is that the human capital can be classified along with two dimensions,productive human capital versus distributive human capital,private human capital versus collective human capital.It is argued that the traditional concepts of human capital were only limited to productive and private human capital.Nevertheless,public education in history or reality centered or centers on the transmission of collective human capital and/or distributive human capital.Based on the theory a holistic framework of analysis is proposed to examine the complicated nature of the relationship between state and public education.