Higher Education and Economic Development in Pakistan: An Appraisal DOI:10.5281/zenodo.8364072

Abstract

Higher education is extremely important for a country's prosperity. Higher education is important at all levels of economic growth for various industries. Higher education boosts worker productivity, improves skills, and advances technology. Similarly, higher education is critical to a country's social and political stability. Tertiary education also contributes significantly to the enhancement of the country's level of living. The study is to investigate the contribution of higher education to Pakistan's per capita GDP. This study uses data from 1980 to 2022 and employs ARDL approaches to estimate coefficients, co-integration techniques to examine long co-integration among variables, and ECM to examine adjustment speed. Because the results of unit-root testing are mixed, ARDL approaches are more suited for data approximation. LFP, GKF, GE and territory education have long-term positive effects on economic development eventually. However, Government-spending (GE) has a positive influence on per capita income, while the rest of rest of variables have no effect on GDP in the near run. The study also discovered a long-run link between the variables, with a 52% pace of adjustment. As a result, this study shows that higher-education (later HE) has a favorable impact on Pakistan's economic-development. Due to a lack of data, this study is confined to HE as a whole and does not address the composition of HE. Therefore, the government should prioritize HE to boost Pakistan's economic development.