Until the publication in 1962 of the OECD-financed study, Investment in Education, prepared by a team led by Prof Patrick Lynch, education was not taken very seriously in Ireland. I recall being asked in 1959 what ministry would interest me should I enter politics at some stage in my career. A senior academic/politician overheard my reply, which was "Education". His instant comment was: "That shows how little you know about politics. There are no votes in education."
In the second half of that initial decade of Irish economic growth, Donogh O'Malley, drawing on the analysis in In- vestment in Education, took up this challenge, with his initiative for free second-level education. We have not looked back since.
It is significant, however, that it was the idea that education might have some economic potential that put this issue so prominently on the political agenda, and has kept it there ever since.
Of course, the personal-development and economic-potential aspects of education are closely linked. For it is the development of an individual's intellectual capacity that makes him or her capable of creating or adding value later on in life, after education has been topped up by whatever vocational training a particular job may also require.
In the fairly materialistic world in which we live, it has been a recognition of this economic reality that has encouraged governments to invest in education in a way, and to an extent, that they might not have done for purely cultural reasons.
But it has to be said that this economy-motivated approach has had the incidental effect of conferring huge benefits upon those whose intellectual development might otherwise have been stunted by a lack of the resources needed to pay for post-primary and, later, higher education.
Educationists should not, therefore, be too dismissive of an economic approach to education.
But we also have to face the fact that a problem can arise when the economic motivation for educational investment leads not only to a general expansion of the system but also to an attempt to direct students prematurely towards vocational studies at the expense of the completion of their intellectual development.
And this problem can become even more serious if and when students themselves are tempted to distort the pattern of - or, indeed, to foreshorten - their education in the hope of securing earlier or higher-paid employment.
Students can all too easily be tempted to undertake vocational studies unsuited to their natural aptitudes and interests in the hope of thereby securing higher-paid initial employment. The very high proportion of students who on leaving school plump for business or accountancy courses in RTCs or universities suggests that this may now be happening.
Of course, there will always be students with a natural bent for business-orientated courses. But one can be forgiven for doubting that this is true of well over one-third of those who enter and are awarded qualifications from higher education institutions, and over one-quarter of all graduates.
Another problem is that some professions have in recent times encouraged early entry into vocational courses at third level, by offering easier access to those students who upon leaving school immediately devote themselves exclusively to studies related to that profession.
By contrast, in the past those who at third level initially pursued their own wider interests before starting vocational training were encouraged in this choice by professional bodies, which saw an advantage in drawing in more broadly educated students.
And there are today certainly some employers who, based on their experience over many years, see greater long-term possibilities for students whose broad education has not been halted at around the age of 18 by premature entry into forms of vocational training.
The ready availability of employment opportunities can also have a very negative effect on the completion of the educational process. When in the early 1990s jobs were in short supply, there was a noticeable lengthening of the period students spent in the educational system, including in particular a sharp rise in the number of graduates remaining at university to undertake postgraduate studies.
By contrast, as was pointed out in this column last week, in the past couple of years of exceptionally high demand for labour, there has been evidence of a foreshortening of the period spent in education, right through from Junior Certificate level to post-graduate studies.
One can only guess at the negative effect all this may have on the longer-term careers of some of those who now feel pressurised to start vocational training before completing their real education, viz the process of developing their individual intellectual capacity. In so far as earlier termination of education proper affects negatively the ultimate earning capacity of the students concerned, this also has serious long-term implications for the future of our economy.
For it is widely known that our economic success has owed an enormous amount to the rapid upgrading of the average educational level of our working population. International studies have, indeed, shown that worldwide there is a most dynamic relationship between the level of education attained and earnings later in life.
In developed countries in 1995 the average earnings of people aged 25-64 with university-level education were just over twice the earnings of people who had left school without benefiting from upper-level secondary education.
In the Irish case the effect of higher education on earnings is particularly striking. In the case of women, those with university-level education earn three times as much as those who left school after Junior Certificate, the highest ratio of this kind for females in any country in respect of which such figures are available.
And in the case of men the educational effect on earnings here is also higher than in most other countries: the average earnings differential here between men with a Junior Certificate and men with university-level education being more than 120 per cent.
At a moment when we have just entered a stage of our demographic evolution where for the next 15 years the numbers attaining age 18 will fall by one-third, any reduction in the proportions of this diminishing cohort remaining at school until the Leaving Certificate and in the proportion completing third-level studies could have very serious effects upon the future growth of output and on the improvement of average living standards.
I feel that the impact of further education on future earnings is still not widely enough understood. I recognise, of course, that there will always be short-sighted young people who in their haste to become earners will ignore both the longer-term earning prospects and the greater job satisfaction they might gain from eventually having a higher-grade job.
But there are bound to be some young people who, if their attention were forcibly drawn to the likely divergence in their prospects depending on whether they leave early or complete their education, would decide after all to remain in the educational system.
Perhaps the Department of Education should consider producing, and circulating to schools for display purposes, posters setting out the huge differentials between average lifetime earnings of those who stay in education as against those who leave early.
Over to you, Michael Woods.