Educational Imbalance and Unequal Distribution of Wealth

Educational imbalance can be related to the unequal distribution of wealth. In today's world, the disparity of the living conditions of the rich and the poor is glaring. Wealthy individuals multiply their wealth while poor people find their lives continually becoming more and more difficult as each day comes.

• Disparity and Discrepancy – The presence of educational imbalance can be seen in the form of the rich people being able to go to the best universities and making their lives better and their future much brighter. On the other hand, poor individuals even cannot afford the cheapest schools and are denied the chance to make their lives better through education. Education, specifically higher education, has become a luxury which only the well to do has the resources to enjoy while the least fortunate need to focus on thinking where to secure their next meal from and no longer have space in their brain to think about education. They even believe that nobody gets rich through education. Going back to the better off families, they do not need education to uplift their living but they are the ones who has the funds to access education.

• Despair – The world in general and the marginalised poor can only pin their hopes on the governmental and charitable educational programs which are not that progressive. We have no choice but to count on them as the poor people's desperate chance. The middle class is even slowly fading away and mostly assimilating to the lower class. There is a possibility that it will be extinct.

• Deluge – With the erosion of the middle class, the upper class which is comprised of the richest few could be the only ones remaining in education. This would happen if the government, charities and civil society will no longer be able to fund free education for the poor.

Wealth in Life and the Government's Role in Educational Imbalance

        Educational imbalance can be in the form of the gap between differing sections of society using education as a point of comparison. For example, children and students who come from higher earning families are compared to their counterparts who are from low income families. Statistics is used in doing the study and the presentation. For example, a study may come up with the resulting information showing that more children from well to do families are able to achieve more in the area of education that those who come from marginalised families.

• Wealth in Life – The results of educational imbalance can be gathered as data and reported as information. In gathering the data, students doing the research on this topic can use criteria like level of education achieved, rate of speed of accomplishment and quality of the educational resources. It is more likely that students who come from families with better income will reach higher levels of education. In other words, the families of these students can afford to send them to higher studies. On the other hand, families with less income are not able to send students to the university or college. There are many students from these families who are able to go to higher learning because of self support and sufficiency. Thus, there is an imbalance in education between those who have more in life and those who have less.

• Important Role of the Government – Topics about educational imbalance almost always involve the shortage of government funds for programs in education against the need of the citizenry for the programs. The news has featured, every now and then, students in government funded universities and colleges go on strikes or demonstrations because government is not financially able in sustaining and adapting financial matters to keep pace with the increasing need.

Human Capital Theory in Educational Imbalance

Educational Imbalance is discussed by putting to light the significance of education as a factor of economic development. To do so, several hypotheses should be considered. Studies prove that education's overall positive effect on the development of the economy is greatly decreased because of imbalance in the tertiary education. The social returns of the lower educational levels is reduced by economic inequality and repression of political rights.

• Educated labour Force – When we discuss educational imbalance, we can start with theories. Human capital theory elaborates that, rather than considered merely as a consumable good, education is an investment in future skills. Since the author Lucas released a seminal article in 1988, education has been considered as one of the main factors in generating endogenous growth in developing long-term growth models. The economic principle behind this proposition is that economies with labour forces which are better educated has the more potential to using in better ways the material elements of production and relevant technical knowledge.

• Critics – In discussing educational imbalance , we also talk about the criticism against the human capital approach. The human capital approach in education as a factor in labour force and economic development, however, is claimed to have unsound theoretical foundations according to its critics, among whom is Klees in 1991. According to them, the human capital theory's basic assumption that education raises productivity is just taken as given; that the proof is argued to be in the domain of sciences other than economics if it is to be discussed. Thus, economists often attribute the accumulation of human capital as a linear function of time devoted to education because of this claimed lack of deeper insights. The specification can be misleading because there may be different results of education at different ages, different levels of education and other structural breaks according to Helberger in 1988. Hence, the critical questions are how does education alter individuals and what effects it has overall.