It often takes more than ten years or even longer to train a person from ignorance into a professional with a certain level of knowledge, skills and cognition that the society needs, and the cost is very high. Moreover, with the progress of society, the concept of lifelong learning has become more and more popular, people have been educated for longer and longer, and the capital invested in education has also increased day by day. However, it takes a long time and process for educational investment to be transformed into educational ability and bring the economic benefits of education into play. Due to the restriction of education itself, this kind of investment should be kept relatively continuous and stable, otherwise it will not be conducive to the intellectual development of the educated.
The effect of education investment has time lag and diversity.
The education field itself cannot directly create the corresponding economic value and income, and the investment cost in the education field can only be made up by the labor achievements or income in other economic fields. After receiving education for more than ten years or even longer, workers need to transform their labor force into real productivity through the market and get corresponding labor remuneration accordingly. Therefore, it often takes a long time to obtain educational investment income, especially economic income, which is indirect to some extent.
The income of education investment is incremental and external.
In the process of production and economic growth, the income and efficiency of material capital decrease due to wear and tear; However, the role of education investment in economic growth shows the characteristics of increasing income. Investment in education leads to the accumulation of knowledge, and knowledge has two important characteristics when it plays a role in economic operation: one is externality, that is, the application of a new knowledge or method in a single enterprise or department will soon have a demonstration effect on other enterprises or departments, thus forming external economic effects; The second is accumulation and expansion, that is, with the growth of knowledge, its production capacity will show a double expansion trend or a qualitative leap. When a knowledge stock develops and accumulates to a certain extent and new innovations appear, it will often bring about major changes in the mode of production and the multiplication of production capacity. This shows that the educational investment used to spread knowledge and promote scientific and technological progress has the characteristics of increasing returns on the whole and in the long run.