Investing in skill: to stay or not to stay on?

There is now a large measure of consensus amongst economists that there is relatively little that governments can do to affect the underlying growth rate of the economy through macroeconomic policy changes. The emphasis has changed to supply-side measures, and one of the most favoured, both in the United States and the UK, is improvement in education and training. In the US, the emphasis has been on securing improvements in basic schooling which is seen as the major deficiency (Chubb and Moe, 1990). In the UK, the main focus has been on our low staying-on rates (Whitfield and Wilson, 1991; Micklewright et al., 1989), limited training opportunities (Prats and Wagner, 1983), and poor access to higher education (DES, 1991).