Vladimir
Spivakovsky

Expensive Human Capital

This capital is no worse than other capitals … Only it is no longer interesting to blah-blah-blah about it. Because there is so much talking about investing in human capital. What’s the use of it?

If you have used the word «Capital», then you need to talk about Capital. And do it in a businesslike way. Still, this capital, sorry to say, costs a lot of money.

Football players are already sold for 100+ million, and Djokovic and Nadal have earned a total of $ 1 billion, for those who do not know. It`s like huge factories in the person of one person.

So, I like this phrase «human capital». But — suddenly there was a problem. Imagine — there is «capital», but there is no business terminology inherent in capital. :-(.

How can we create, grow and educate a person to have this capitalization.

Have you heard about Educational Marketing? I mean Educational Marketing to compare human capitals and the benefits of them?
Can I seriously talk about capital, if there is no way to measure it? For example, with the stock price …
For example, if the economy has the Dow Jones index, which is calculated basing on 30 rating companies, why cannot we consider 10-20 human competences and deduce a similar index of personal shares?
— How much a person costs? — Who will they invest money in? — Who can master knowledge and how much? These are the constituents of the human capital size.

For example, in one Chinese school they allowed to buy marks in a special school bank. If you do not know something, you take a good mark on the pledge, on credit. And then you learn and repay your debt. And it works, nobody abuses.

The third distinguishing feature of human capital is its quality. Do we know how to define it? No, we don`t. Can we borrow the tools from the business? Yes, we can. This is the ISO-9002 quality system. It is ideal for the education system. All the ingredients are present.
Conclusions.

a) we still do not know how much a good education should cost (and I fully understand that it’s not just about money). That is, currently it is an investment in nowhere.

b) until the Big Brands (probably new ones) come to the education system — it will trail along at the back of the world.

c) of course, I know that it is difficult to calculate KPi of human capital in education because of the remoteness of the results from the investment period. Something like you invest now, but the result will be received in 10-15 years.

(if the conversation about money in this context is hurting someone, then the very concept of «human capital» should be abolished).

Dream.
I imagine this picture: the boy is 7 years old and he is told: we are preparing you for a programmer worth $ 200 thousand a year from the age of 20. And another boy is trained for a biologist worth $ 300 thousand a year and the third one for a power engineer worth $ 1 million a year. Do your best, guys.
This will be a completely different process of training! Even if during the course of studies all plans and preferences radically change. This will be the growth of human capital.
Besides, there will be a return on your investment!