Analysis on the Relevance of Adult Education: Evaluation of the Economic Impacts of Adult Education Centers in East Germany after Reunification

成人教育的相关性分析：统一后东德成人教育中心的经济影响评估

• 批准号: 437570974
• 负责人: Professor Dr. Stephan L. Thomsen
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: Institut für Wirtschaftspolitik
• 依托单位国家: 德国
• 项目类别: Research Grants
• 财政年份: 2020
• 资助国家: 德国
• 起止时间: 2019-12-31 至 2023-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gepris.dfg.de/gepris/projekt/437570974?language=en
• 关键词: Analysis; Relevance; Adult; Education; Evaluation

Adult education has gained in importance in recent years due to the higher political relevance of lifelong learning and the accompanying expansion in capacities (so-called quaternary education). To date, the almost 900 adult education centers (VHSn) (10.5% of which are in eastern Germany) have a broad educational mandate and are under direct or indirect control of the municipalities or counties/cities with no district. With around 6.6 million enrolments in over 590,000 courses and over 17.8 million annual teaching hours in 2016, adult education centers constitute one of the main pillars of adult education. VHSn are intended to ensure that the population is provided with educational opportunities by offering a wide range of further education, retraining and new qualifications as well as various cultural and health training courses. In addition, political and social education plays a central role: citizens can inform themselves about and contribute to basic or locally relevant topics via various program formats. This is intended to counteract growing political participation fatigue. While the VHSn in West Germany developed relatively freely after the Second World War and underwent a series of programmatic changes, in the GDR the supply soon narrowed. When the East German education system was restructured after reunification, the VHSn faced considerable challenges to adapt. They became an institution independent of the state education system, whose programmatic orientation, sponsorship and financing had to be found anew. New courses with socio-political and scientific-technical content were increasingly offered in the course program. To the best of our knowledge, the project aims to investigate for the first time causal economic effects of adult education on labor market and educational outcomes as well as a number of supplementary non-pecuniary indicators. In order to identify the causal effects on the outcomes of interest, we will use the quasi-experimental situation of changes in adult education provision in eastern Germany caused by German reunification (as a natural experiment). Regional and temporal differences in implementation allow the definition of treatment and control groups conditional on different individual participation possibilities or probabilities. The effects will be estimated using various difference-in-difference approaches.

近年来，由于终身学习具有更高的政治相关性以及随之而来的能力扩展（所谓的第四元教育），成人教育变得越来越重要。迄今为止，近 900 个成人教育中心 (VHSn)（其中 10.5% 位于德国东部）拥有广泛的教育任务，并直接或间接受直辖市或无区县/市的控制。 2016年，成人教育中心拥有约660万注册学生，开设超过59万门课程，年教学时数超过1780万小时，是成人教育的主要支柱之一。 VHSn 旨在通过提供广泛的继续教育、再培训和新资格以及各种文化和健康培训课程，确保为人们提供教育机会。此外，政治和社会教育发挥着核心作用：公民可以通过各种节目形式了解基本或当地相关主题并为之做出贡献。此举旨在抵消日益增长的政治参与疲劳。第二次世界大战后，西德的 VHSn 发展相对自由，并经历了一系列计划性变化，但东德的供应很快就缩小了。当东德教育体系在统一后进行重组时，VHSn 面临着巨大的适应挑战。它们成为独立于国家教育系统的机构，必须重新寻找其规划方向、赞助和融资。课程计划中越来越多地提供具有社会政治和科学技术内容的新课程。据我们所知，该项目旨在首次调查成人教育对劳动力市场和教育成果的因果经济影响以及一些补充非金钱指标。为了确定对感兴趣结果的因果影响，我们将使用德国统一引起的德国东部成人教育供给变化的准实验情况（作为自然实验）。实施中的区域和时间差异允许根据不同的个人参与可能性或概率来定义治疗组和对照组。将使用各种双重差分方法来估计效果。