Certain aspects of the individual education investment efficiency assessment

Abstract

The article addresses the reasons, results and grounding for personal decisions concerning gaining some of other educational level. It was found, that the wages being in fact the price of labour competencies of an employee, does not always cover the expenditures required for obtaining them, one of the variants of such obtaining being formal education. We performed the calculations of the expected return on the individual education investments based on the data about wages and price of education. According to these calculations, gaining higher education is less profitable compared to other educational levels. For assessment of investment efficiency, the article, in addition to return on investments, addresses the risks of an individual in the labour market and the effect of the educational level on them. It is defined that employee’s possessing of higher education considerably reduces the risk of unemployment. Elementary and intermediate vocational training also provide sufficient guarantees for employment, while the employees with only basic education or without it are at great risk. As another important risk for employees we pointed out the risk for health. The analysis showed, that the greatest share of employees in hazardous industries have elementary and intermediate vocational training, while people with just basic education are also often busy at hard labour occupations. The conclusion was made that income and risk in individual education investment assessment are more or less balanced. Personal decision concerning gaining education can be compared to risk management strategy of a company: risky strategy here suggests waiving education and early entry into working life, while cautious strategy consists of gaining the highest available educational level.