The question this study seeks to answer is whether there is a relationship between levels of education, technology, and economic development in selected countries; and also whether education and technology are causal factors or correlates of economic development. The late Professor William F. Ogburn dealt with such factors in his theory of cultural change. He emphasized the major influence of inventions (technology) in cultural change. However, in the present study, the author was interested primarily in developing nations that have found technological advancement difficult. Hence, these nations have relied on improving the level of education. The idea of holding to the Ogburn perspective was an attractive one; yet, for these nations, treating level of education as the independent variable was more realistic. Ogburn's theory, then, has been modified by assuming that education is the key variable for development in the nations selected for this study. Then, factor analysis was utilized to derive factor scores for indicators of level of education, technology, and economic development. The modern world concept proposed by Wallerstein (1974) was adopted, and sixty-one countries were randomly selected from the core, semiperipheral, and peripheral countries in the non-communist world to make comparisons utilizing partial correlations. The results suggest that education and technology are both necessary though not sufficient conditions for economic development, and that education-technology-economic development may represent a causal sequence. Furthermore, there was a significant difference in the level of education between 1960 and 1975 although no differences were noted in the levels of technology and economic development in these same years. In addition, there was a significant difference between the core, semiperipheral, and peripheral countries in 1960 and / 1975 on level of education although no differences were noted between these countries on the levels of technology and economic development in these same years. Also, by modifying Ogburn's theory in treating education as an innovation, it was found that education was indeed a major variable for economic development in the selected countries. Lastly, the studies which have assigned little or no credence to the relationship between education and economic development are refuted here. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 41-07, Section: A, page: 2837. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1980.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:fsu.edu/oai:fsu.digital.flvc.org:fsu_74221 |
| Contributors | CUNNINGHAM, DONALD GILBERT., Florida State University |
| Source Sets | Florida State University |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text |
| Format | 120 p. |
| Rights | On campus use only. |
| Relation | Dissertation Abstracts International |
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