OPTIMAL PLANNING IN EDUCATION TO MEET
SOCIAL DEMAND AND MANPOWER
REQUIREMENTS
A. Dei£
Faculty of Engineering, University of Cairo
Ao~~~~c!_: T~is paper considers problems of edu-
cation in develop~n~ countries. In such coun-
tries the nlanninr: is directed t01mrds ful +'il--
linfT, the social demand for education as '-Tell as
meet~nr: the needs for l'lanpoller to achieve eco-
nomic developl'lent.
In develo"inr: countries, t he choice l'la:r have
t o be !:lade bet'.-Teen universal primary education
and li terac:r on one hand , and the developl'lent
of secondar:r and hir;her education to nrovide
the necessary sk ill s for econol'lic r;rmrth on
the other. T' \i s is because 101-, income and sca-
rc it:r of re sourc es of'ten set budr;et or teacher-
suppl -' constraints that one of these goals vill
have to be sacrificed or at least compromised.
Even if the bud r;et lil'litation is removed vhi le
planninr: for t 11ese tvo lSoalS. still the teacher
sUDplv constraint makes the two ail'ls inter-
dependent.
In this paper ve r:ive the reasons for Hhich
the need for skilled mannOHer should not be
comnrol'lised. The n~oblel'l becomes one of plan-
n i ng for maximum ad!'lission in primar:J" educat--
ion "'hile taking into consideration teacher
constraints and budget limitat ions. An obJect-
ive func t ion is constructed representing un-
ad!'litted students. 'linimizing this ob1ective
function subject to teacher sUPT->ly and cost
constraints "'ould :rield an optimal path giving
the :Iearlv number of pupils ',ho can be admit- -
ted for best educational nlanning.
Introduction: Education pla:rs a vital role in
imnr-c,vin-p- -fhe conditions of a societ:r. I t helps
to cure the ills of corruntion and inefficiency
and builds uT-> an effective state based on vide-
spread culture. It makes t he individual more
intelligent and more trushlo rthy. It is also a
means of nroduction of material wealth. Briefly
the most valuable return COl'les from investment
in hUl'lan beinf;s.
:}hat people spend on education is regarded
as a forl'l of private consumntion, since it ful-
fills certains needs in the individual. It is
also an investment since people realize that
an educated person gets paid more and achieves
a better social standing. Of course, the re-
turn of education is not always measur~ in
materialistic terl'lS but actuall:1 the more edu-
cated v ou are the greater your earninlSs and
social recor;nition. From this angle there is
a s ocial demand for education.
Education is ahTays thought of as a factor
in economic growth for it has long been known
that production is not only a function of man-
power and capital but also of skill and orga-
179
nization. This is taken as a basis for educa
tional planninr; to meet manpower requirements,
a second goal of education.
In developinfT, countries, t he choice nay
have to be made between cOl'lpulsory primary edu-
cation, and the developl'lent of secondary and
higher education to provide the necessary ski-
lls for economic development on the other. This
is because the lm! educational attainment and
income of such countries often set budget or
teacher supply constraints at suc~ a level that
one of these goals will have to be sacrificed
or at least comnromised [1].
In t~is paper a method is given to fulfill
the social demand for education as well as to
satisfy the need for manpower required to ach-
ieve econol'lic growth. The latter is not com-
promised and the former is achieved optimally
under cost and teacher supply constraints.
Levels of Education: Education levels in any
countr-:;-ar-e--b~;;-ic-all~r t hree : primary, second--
ar:: and higher level.
1. Primar:, level: ,,'here basic knovledge is ta--
ught like langual;es and arithmetic together
with some general knowledge. The fOrl'ler are
tools which are constanclY used in life and
thus are never forgotten so the return to both
the countr:! and the individual is realitively
high. This kind of education should be compUl-
sory. It also produces l;ener'1.1 unskilled labor
vhich can be transformed into skilled labor
b:: later training.
2. Secondary level: ,.;here different kinds of
inforl'lation are taught, lil:e ph'Tsics, chemis -
try, b iology, geolof':;' and others ... The return
is relatively lower t han the pril'lar:1 level
since people tend not to use all information.
thus the latter is usually forfT,otten. But it
is inportant for it prepares students to !1igher
education, it shows them options available to
them. It can be a measure of the student's
ability for certain specialization. Everybody
should be allowed to join this level of educa-
tion as part of the freecom and democracy of
educatio~. In some countries this level i s
divided into a preparatory level which has the
properties mentioned above and a later second-
ary level vhich prepares the student for high-
er education and works as a bottleneck to the
latter.
This wor~has been -Sponsored by the Demographic
Pro.1ection Anal:/sis Project. the Computer
Center, American University in Cairo.
 180 A. Deif

Primary level
Tl years

o<p

General ':'e chnical

PrepRratory Level Preparatory Level
T2 Years T4 years

Unskilled Labo r
I
O<.T
Gene r al Teacher Technical Semi-skilled labor
Secondary level Training level ~econdary level
T5 years T3 years T6 years

I
Teachers needed for
primary education

Skilled labor
Super visors
Intermediate technician
Co ordinators
Technical assistants
Uni ve r s it Y !, Institute '~aster c r aftsmen
T7 year s TB years

I .
Profess~onals

Top level technicians

Top level coor dinators
manap;er s

TOTAL LABOR FORCE

BLOC DIAGRAM IN EDUCATION

 Optimal Planning in Educat ion 181

3.Hi~her level: this kind of education suuplies PTl is the graduation ratio from the last year
the countr ~' with professionals. The return to of the primary level and a p is the percentage
the individual and the country is h i ~he r than of students admitted to preparatory education
both primar:r and secondary levels. Not every- from the total p;raduates frOM the ryrimary
one can 8e allowed into this level only stu- education .
dents ~howing interest and ability. ~he number of enrolled ~tudents at each l e-
Social Demand for Education: In most develop- vel of the teacher traininr: education is thus
Tn"p,-co-uiitr-fes',- -e-ducation -is-financed b~! the p;i.ven b'r:
state. Since the latter has many other claims z. 1,.. ~ k
on its budget, an obvious nuestion ,rould be: ~(k) = Ci ~(o) + ~ C
k-r -(
U1a (r)?T~U5~ r-l
)
how much education should the state finance? r=l 1 ~ T '-
(3)
This can be calculated from the rates of retu- l·There C3 is a hi~iar:onal matrix of prO:'loteTs
rn of education compared to other services and ".nd re:->eaters. llr = ('l,· .'"),1),"1' u = (O, .. O,l)T'1
sectors of nroduction. The obvious ansver 110uld P~0 is the p;raduJtion ratio ' from5 the last '-
be to invest in secondary and higher education ~rerir of t ",e preparatory level and a is the
to meet skilled manpower needs for economic percentage of students admitted to teacher
growth from vlhich the economic return is high. training level from the total r;raduates from
But the duty of any government is to fulfill the preparator:r level.
the hopes of all individuals seekin(( education , The number of r:raduates of teachers is thus
a concept of freedom and democracy in educat-- given by:
ion, as well as to compel all children to ob-
tain a fairly basic education. As governrlent (1(ld = PnU6 ~(k-l) (4)
resources are scarce the former cannot be to- ~fuere U =( O, .. ,o,1)I3 and PT3 is the graduat-
tally satisfied . This also a pplies to the lat -- G from the ast year of the teac her
ion ratlo
ter, hut due to its social and polit ical im- traininp; level.
Dortance it has to be achieved one da:r throur;h And the total number of teachers is then:
~ompulsory primary education. The return from k k . ,-
this is also high for educational inv~stment n(k) = (l-lJ h,(o) + ); (l-IJ)) - .) r~(j) (5)
is not restricted to the economic side but is ,1=1
felt in other spheres: the psycholo~ical ad- - ',There IJ is the attrition rate of teac hers due
vantar;es to be gained is that the country cea- to death, migration and retirement.
ses to be divided into educated and uneducated. ?-rov tl1e rat io of teachers/students should be
This helps to removing class distinetion~ a p.:reater or equal to a quant i t:r a
desirahle p;oal in a socialist country - as ,,( k) ?_ a U E (k) ( 6)
well as closinp; the gan between income diffe- 7
~~e re U7 =(1,1.1 •... ,1)Tl
rent ials. Next we ~roceed to calculate the cost of
Therefore we need to build primar~r schools
education durinp the whole planning period n
and train more teachers, but this is expensive. since it sets a constraint on the number of
How long can one wait for compul sory admission
admitted students.
for all children? This depends on the forth-
During the financial year ~ the following
coming bud~et allocated to education. cost elements for the primary education system
The ulanning for achieving this ob.1 ectivc must be accounted for:
starts b:r analysing the demop;raphic aspects of 1. Costs pr oportional to the total enrollment
the population, i.e., distribution of the pop
in yp.ar k, they are mainly ~"ages and mainten--
ulation by age and sex in order to estimate ance costs at a rate X(k) per student.
the relative size of the school age population. 2. Cost~ proportional to the difference bet-
The problem becomes that of reachinp; optimal ween the total enrollment in year k+2 and that
educational planning tovrards satisfyinr; the of yeA.r k+l, they are mainly new buildin,;;
social demand in education while limited by costs at a rate B(k) per student.
the teacher supply and cost constraints.
He start by calculatinp; the number of tea- ,',V(k) = X(k)U 7 E(k) + B(k)U7(E(k+2)-E(f;~))
chers available at any given year since they
set a constraint on the number of enrolled stu- Substituting from (1) into (7) and summing
dents in the primary education. over all k from 1 to n. where n is the plan-
From [8], the number of enrolled students ning period, we ~et
at each level of the primar:! education is n k k k j
given by: k U {l: X(k)[C1E(O) + !. c - · U1A(j)] +
7 k=l j=l l
E(K) = Ci~(O) + ~ Ck - j U A(j) (1)
j=l 1 1 n-2 k+2) k+2 k+j-2
vfuere Cl' is a bidiagonal matrix of promoters L B(k)[C E(O + L Cl U1A(j)] -
k=l l j=l
and repeaters, UT=(l,O,O, •. ,O)Tl and A(j) re-
presents admitte~ students to tEe first ~rade
in year j, of the primary level.
The number of enrolled students at each
level of the preparatory education is given by:
E(k) = C~ E(O) + ~ Ck -.j U3 a (j) P U2EU-l) 1'~ere G is the educational budget set for the
.1=1 2 p Tl whole planning period n.
(2) The reason for summing over all k from 1
'{here C2 is a bidiagonal matrix of promoters to n is that the planning is directed towards
and repeaters, U2=(O,O, •. O,1)Tl U~=(1,O, .. O)T2' optimal allocation of resources for the whole
period.
 182
Next we proceed to formulate the objective
function F. The latter is a summation of the
number of unadmitted students to the first gra-
de of the primary education level during the
whole planning period n.
No. of unadmitted students at the first year
s(l) = D(l)-A(l), with s(l)~O (9)
No. of unadmitted students at the year before
final s(n-l) = D(n-l) - A(n-l), with s(nl)~O
l,There D represents the number of pupils
seeking entrance to the first year of the pri-
mary level, from demographic data.
n-l n- l
F = !. s ej) !. [D(j) A(j)),
j=l j=l
with Sj ~ 0, j 1, .•. , n- l, and s(n)_ = 0
students
. 2. F.xact rates of growth are not announced.
_students seekIng entraBcEj. Lack of data is al1{ays faced.
admitted students A
~ unadmitted students s
k
123
n-2 n-l n
\1anpower requirements: Education is a para--
~et-e-r-of gro-;.;th-:--This fact has been known for
a long time, for the simple reason that an ed-
ucated person tends to be more skilled and
organized. Therefore investing in education
wo~ld yield progress and economic growth. But
it should be carefully noticed that education
should also be linked ,-/i th the expected rates
of economic growth; otherwise "excess" educa-
tion is not needed. The author differentiates
between two kinds of "excess" education; one
b:l producing more graduates than are necessary
the other by teaching the individual more know- legal requirements which make it easy to deter-
ledge than the requires. The first is respon-
sible for the redundancy in jobs and disguised
unemployment. The second makes production dis-
nroportional with the degree obtained.
- The amount of educati~n given should not
exceed ,That is necessary either in quantity or
in quality; otherwise it will be a threefold
burden on the econom:r: first, cost of educat-
ion, second, the lack of productivity on the
part of the graduate in a job which was creat-
ed to employ him and thirdly, the energy dis --
sipated in education that could have been dir-
ected elsewhere. Briefly the number of profes-
sionals in certain fields has to be limited
A. Deif
otherwise they will substitute workers in some
areas or be idle in others which may explain
the low level of remuneration they ultimately
receive, for it is the individual's productivi-
ty and not his academic degree which decides
his income level.
Professional people are designers of change.
They are the cream of a society and their nu-
mber should be kept as small as possible to
carry out efficiently their exact duties. In
this case the degree will be a passport to a
suitable job and production linked with quali-
(10 ) fications. Their salaries would then reflect
their qualifications and productivity. Of cour-
se the training of an elite is a less popular
ideas but more advantageous economically. Those
escaping such measures can still be of use:
they can be exported to compensate for the de-
(11) ficit in the balance of payments and substit-
uted for the shortage of teachers. In this way
they will be of benefit to society. Hence a
protocole can be arranged between such a coun-
try and neighbouring ones suffering from a man-
power shortage which will give the country po-
litical and cultural credit. A country may be
poor in certain respects but rich by virtue of
its population and resources of manpower.
It is not always easy to estimate the man-
power requirement for expected economic growth.
1. Extrapolation of rates of growth is not
correct for one cannot expect periods of re-
cession which reduce needs.
1~. Manpower is not only heads and hands, it
should be related to available resources and
economic status.
5. It is usually difficult to put an exact
equivalence between a job and the education
needed for it. This is why we should not fore-
cast manpower in one sector, rather we should
make cross-classification giving occupation by
each sector even though it is difficult to
link this classification with qualifications.
6. Distribution of population by occupation is
not always right for example a mechanic can
substitute in different areas; this is refer-
red to as the replacement between jobs.
7. It is difficult to determine the manpower
needed for new inventions. They usually need
urgent and large numbers of workers with quali-
fications that cannot always be predicted.
It appears, therefore, that forecasting
manpower needs is generally difficult even in
the medium or short term. Sometimes in many
skilled jobs e.g. doctor there are professional
mine a country's needs. However one should not
rely on the exact statistical data of manpower
needs as the basis of possible increase in pro-
ductivity and targets aimed at. Usually the
economy needs a spectrum of skills ranging
from simple manual labor to the work of highly-
trained ~cientists. It will not be surprising
if one finds that first priority is given to
technicians and sub-professionals, second to
teachers, third to engineers and scientists,
fourth to managerial and executive personnels,
etc.
If the required labor Ni(k) by sectors of

production is given exogenously from the eco-
nomic sector as well as the forecasting percen-
tage of migration and retirement ~i then one ~
can calculate the annual number of labor requi-
red to graduate Ni (k) from the following equa· ,
tion: k k k j '"
Ni(k) = (l-~) N.(O) + 1: (l-~.) - N.(j) (12)
1 j=l 1 1
The relation between the number of admitted
students Ai(k) joining the education type i and
the number of graduates Ni can be shown to be
T T j j
Ai(k) = [l/IT P .] 1: (-) Cr
l j=O
j=l .1 li
where T is the number of years spent by the
student to complete the education type i, and
where P and r are promotion and repeater ratio,
jc rli . rTi is a combination function like
the !"ollo,nng:
°Crli. •. rTi 1
lCrli ... rTi = r li + r 2 i + .•. + r Ti
'l'
Crli ... rTi = r l i r 2i r 3i····· r Ti
_ If the number of univ~sity graduates is
Nu, institute graduates NI' then by substitut-
ing in (13) the number of entrants Ah that
should be admitted to higher education can be
obtained. By substituting Ah in (13) we obtain
the number of entrants As that should be ad-
mitted to secondar,T education. Also knowinp;
~he number of technical secondary p;raduates
NsT we can compute from (13) the number of
entrants AsT that should be admitted to secon-
dary technical education. At last the number
of entrants Ap T to technical preparatory can
be obtained from (1:1) knoving the number of
technical preparatory graduates Np . T '
Planning to meet social demand & manpower needs
The two aims are interdependent' for an in~-­
crease in the required labor \-Till be at t he
expense of teac hers' supply.
Now the number of preparatory graduates is
channelled into general secondary, technical
secondary and teacher training levels giv i nr
~ ~
PT2U5E(r-l) ~ As(r) + As.T(r)+aT(r) PT2U 5 ~ (r-l)
(1 5)
The inequality sif',n allmls for dropouts and
can be changed to an equality si gn.
Similarly the number of primary graduates
is allocated to preparatory and technical pre-
paratory giving:
PTl U2 E(s-1) ~ Ap.T(s)+up(s)PTlU2E(s-1)
Substituting from (15) into (3), and from (1 6 )
into (2) we obtain:
~ k % k k-r ~
E(k) = C E(O) + r~l
3
Ci
UJI[PT2 U5E(r-,l)-
As(r) - AST(r)]
'" k k
E(k) 1: C -jU [P U F. (j-l) -
j=l 2 3 Tl 2
Ap.T(j) ] (18 )
Optimal Planning in Education 183
Here also the inequality sign allows for drop-
outs and can changed into an equality sign.
Substituting from (1) into (18), then from
(18) into (17), then from (17) into (4), and
from (4) into (5) and then from (5) and (1)
into (6) we get:
k k -
(l-~) 11(0) + 1: (1-~)k-jpT3U6(C~-1 E(O) +
j=l
,.;
.•. r T . N(k+T-j)
1 i (l3)
k = I, ... , n-l (19)
The problem becomes one of minimizing the
function F given in (11) and sub jects to the
constraint equations (19) and (8), together
with D(j) - A(j) > 0 for j=l, ... ,n-l' which
(14) is a linear progr~ing problem whose solution
will give the number of admitted student
A(l) .... A(n-l).
Ac~n?wledgement: The author wishes to thank
Prof. Roshdi Amer and Dr. Hadia 1·1 akary for the
valuable discussions they had about the subject.
Dr. Nadia r~akary read thoroughly the whole
manuscript and made many corrections.
REFERENCES
1. J. Vaizey: The 'Economics of Education,
Faber, 1962
2 . T. Thonstad: Education and Manpower ,
Theoretical Hodels and emnirical annlica-
tions, Oliver and Boyd, 1969. ,.
3. P. Armitage, C. Smith, P. Alfer: Decision
/·l odels for Educational Planning, AlIen
Lane the Penp;uin Press, 1969.
11. Ta Ngoc Chau: Demographic Asnects of
Educational Planning Une s co, International
Institute for Educational ?lanninp;. 1969 .
5. R. Doignant: The Relation of Educational
Plans to Economic and Social Planning.
Unesco, International Institute for
Filucational Planning, 1967.
6 . F'. !!arbison: Educational Planning and
HIuman Resource Development., Unesco.
International In s ti t ute for Educ~tional
Planning 1967.
7. '.1. ~']oodhall' Cost Benefit Anal:.rsis in
Educational Planning, Une s co, Interna-
tional Institute for Educational Plan-
(l G) nin" , 1970.
B. R. Amer: A 'lathematical Programming Model
for a School Admission Optimum Pol i cy,
Technical Papers in the D.P.A. Pr c J ~ ct,
the Computer Center, the American
University in Cairo.
(17)