Optimal enrolment policy for higher education

Summary

The balancing of the supply and the demand of highly educated manpower is the purpose of this paper. When the forecast for the demand is given, the balancing is achieved by a suitable educational policy. If there is an excess of supply, then instead of having these ‘excess’ persons a taxpayers, the society must provide for their re-education or the unemployment aid in addition to their previous useless education. On the other hand, if there is shortage of qualified manpower, the pace of economic progress is delayed since the society either has to make without or to utilize inadequately educated manpower or to import foreign specialists. The planning of the educational system is presented here as a mathematical problem in a general case. In the model a method is developed for deciding an optimal enrolment policy in higher education into different specialties in order to supply the need for these specialists in the future according to the demand forecast. The model also gives the transition policy from the present, possibly not optimal enrolment policy. The restrictions to the educational system are presented by the number of the potential enrolments and by the capacity of the educational system.