This important reference collection - prepared by a leading authority in the field - presents a careful selection of the most important articles and papers in the economics of education. It focuses in particular on the notion of education as investment rather than consumption. This field was pioneered by three American scholars - Jacob Mincer, Gary Becker and Theodore Schultz - who demonstrated that education is indeed a way in which individuals can invest in themselves in the simple sense of incurring financial costs today in order to enhance potential earnings tomorrow. There is a very strong association between education and earnings in the labour markets in both capitalist and communist countries and it is this generalisation that forms the bedrock of the doctrine of education as human capital. This major book provides testimony to the excitement and controversy that continue to be hallmarks of the economics of education and the theory of human capital.