The Economic Efficiency of the Romanian Higher Education at the End of the 1960 s . A Demographical Perspective

At the end of the 1960s beginning of the 1970s, a wide range of technocrats were vividly preoccupied with the maximization of the economic potential of Romania’s population. For example, the debate dedicated to the study and analysis of the economically active population end of the occupied population, organized by the Central Direction of Statistics (Direcţia Centrală de Statistică) and the Academy of Social and Political Sciences (ASSP) on 29th of April 1970 shows an increasing interest for the formation and maximization of human resource (Probleme economice , 1970:91-94). Statisticians, demographers, economists, sociologists were willing to Abstract: With the development of demography and population studies in the second half of the 1960s in Romania, a special attention was given to the economic efficiency of the Romanian education system, as education was considered ‘the main factor of economic growth’. Several demographic and economic studies reveal a special concern for the developmental effectiveness of the higher education system. This article examines several key concepts (such as ‘intellectual capital’ as opposed to ‘physical capital’, or ‘education stocks’), used by Romanian demographers for the evaluation of the economic efficiency of the Romanian higher education system at the end of the 1960s.