The Social Demand for Education in Peru: Students' Choices and State Autonomy

Offering a general model for predicting the social demand for college education, human capital theory imputes students' aggregate costs and benefits to postsecondary study. This article questions the applicability of that model in the Third World. The author's study of 3,200 graduating secondary school students in 45 schools in Peru found that no one set of factors explains the decision to seek entrance to a university. Instead, the reasons for college going differ among groups, depending on gender, ethnicity, social class, and urban or rural residence. To the extent that this heterogeneity of choice occurs in other nations, the findings thus indicate a need to reappraise the utility of human capital theory for understanding social demand. The findings also suggest the inherent limits of any nation's ability to mold public demand through centralized state planning.