Why the poor reject education

CONTRARY to popular perception Pakistan’s education crisis is not a core problem of access. It is a problem of incentives. Until that reality is grasped, the system will continue to expand without delivering either learning or opportunity. The dominant narrative, shaped by well-meaning experts and echoed by commentators, is simplistic, intellectually lazy and politically convenient. Its prescriptions are predictable: build more schools, expand universities, pour in more public money. The oft-repeated figure of 26 million out-of-school children is invoked to fabricate moral urgency, resting on a flawed assumption that parents who keep their children out of school are behaving irrationally. They are not. They are responding, with considerable clarity, to the incentives in front of them.

Education, in this framing, is treated as an unquestionable moral good. And needs to be ex­­panded irrespective of context, incentives, outco­m­­es or returns. Interrogating this assumption is treated as near-heretical. The result is the substitution of sentiment for analysis, and advocacy for understanding. Political responses reflect this sha­­l­lowness. For many policymakers, education is not about learning outcomes but patronage — an instrument for distributing jobs to teachers and low-skilled staff within their constituencies. Acc­ess is invoked; quality is ignored. The system exp­ands in form while hollowing out in substance.

Before demanding that families sacrifice more and governments spend more, a fundamental question must be confronted: why should anyone invest in education at all? This is the central economic question that the discourse avoids. Gary Becker’s theory of human capital is unambiguous: education consumes real resources today — time, money, foregone income — in exchange for higher earnings tomorrow. It’s an investment. And like any investment, its value depends entirely on expected returns relative to costs.

When schooling is poor, learning outcomes weak, and labour markets fail to reward skills, the economic case for education crumbles. Families send children to school only if they expect those sacrifices to pay off. When returns are this weak, incentives collapse. Every year in school has an opportunity cost. A child studying is not earning, not gaining work experience and not contributing to household income. For low-income families, these costs are immediate, while the benefits are distant and uncertain. More importantly, in a low-growth rate economy experiencing high graduate unemployment and an uncertain job market the signal is clear for young people: education does not pay reliably. When expected returns fall below these costs, rational households pull back. They do not persist out of moral obligation or some grand national goal. Refusal to invest in education is not ignorance; arithmetic drives the decision.

For many policymakers, education is not about learning outcomes but patronage.

Framed in these terms, the behaviour of millions of Pakistani households is not puzzling, it is entirely rational. Global evidence shows that each additional year of schooling raises earnings by roughly nine to 10 per cent on average. Pakistan’s labour market returns consistently 5pc to 7pc, barely half the global norm, and even weaker at the primary level. Until this basic calculus is acknowledged, calls for higher enrolment and greater spending will remain ineffective and fundamentally misguided. Low returns, however, are only part of the problem. Pakistan’s education problems run deeper. Education has also lost its power to signal competence; capability rarely determines outcomes here.

Appointments depend on connections, not credentials. Loyalty, and not competence, is rewarded by promotions. Contracts flow through networks, not capability. Influence is inherited, not earned. Social mobility comes from the family in which you are born not the talent with which you are born. In such an environment, a degree stops indicating ability and becomes a bureaucratic formality, a hurdle to clear, not a skill to be demonstrated.

The consequences follow with grim predictability. Credential inflation takes hold: degrees proliferate while their value erodes. Credentials serve as administrative filters in a system that knows no better way to classify applicants. Meanwhile, those who genuinely develop skills leave. Brain drain is the rational response when education serves as an exit strategy rather than a productivity investment. Students understand that effort is weakly linked to success. The rational response is to disengage.

The labour market compounds the damage. In most functioning economies, education feeds a com­­petitive private sector that bids for talent and rewards ability. In Pakistan, the dominant aspiration is narrow, a government job, which offers se­­cu­­rity, status and permanence in an otherwise uncertain economy. The problem is that the queue for those jobs is long, the positions are few, and in that queue, merit is largely beside the point. Con­nections, patronage and political favour determi­ne who advances. Education becomes preparation for waiting. Students internalise this quickly. Success depends less on application of knowledge and mastering ideas than on cultivating relationships. The state reinforces these distortions. Education systems are treated not as engines of learning but as employment schemes. The government does not treat education as a serious professional enterpri­­se. The signal to everyone watching is unmistakable.

The cultural damage is no less severe. Academic institutions are routinely led by individuals whose qualifications are bureaucratic seniority or political proximity, not intellectual achievement. Most tellingly, the government increasingly outsources its own policymaking to international consultants and foreign lenders, sidelining domestic scholars in favour of externally produced prescriptions. The message to students is clear: even the state does not believe its educated people have anything worth hearing.

Put these signals together and the logic sounds well placed. Markets reward connections over competence. Government rewards loyalty over creativity. Students are not irrational. They read incentives with great precision. When education fails to generate adequate economic returns, it becomes difficult to justify the cost. Education cannot compensate for a system built on patronage. Nor can it survive as a moral slogan while being denied as a credible economic opportunity. Until merit prevails in government, education will remain a weak investment for individuals, even as it continues to function as a comforting illusion for the state. More schools will not fix broken incentives. More spending will not repair a system that rebukes the competent and rewards the connected. The crisis is not one of supply. It is one of trust.

Nadeem ul Haque is former VC PIDE and deputy chair of the Planning Commission.

Shahid Kardar is a former governor of the State Bank of Pakistan.

Published in Dawn, April 1st, 2026

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