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Private individuals in Germany bear in some cases high costs individually and spend leisure time to a considerable extent for their professional further qualification. To what extent does the investment of money and time pay for course participants in further education? The author outlines how course participants estimate to which degree they benefit from their professional further education and how they judge the relationship of cost and effect. A high degree of satisfaction is found. However…
The economy of education identifies various kinds of usefulness of education: individual benefits and also so-called external benefits, by which society profits (internal as well as external benefits can be monetary or non-monetary). These dimensions of usefulness differ in the degree to which they can be quantified. The benefits of education have not been researched as thoroughly as its cost. The more far-reaching welfare effects of further education are especially hard to measure. The evalu…
Can the benefit derived from a course in further education be measured? Which methodological considerations are to be taken into account? It must be defined first of all which indicators are supposed to indicate the benefit. Evaluators and stakeholders must agree on set points. Data have to be collected using the methods of qualitative as well as quantitative research. Under evaluation aspects, anecdotic evidence has no value. At the end of the article, the author sums up four basic methods of …
Already Max Scheler developed a functional definition of education. With Scheler, education is not only not opposed to usefulness, but even prerequisite for reaching certain aims at all. In terms of the postmodernist media and mass society the relationship between education and usefulness has to be reformulated. With reference to Lyotard, the author develops a concept of education as a regulative idea. Under these conditions, individuals are not expected to integrate themselves culturally into…
