Authors: Mihail Diakomihalis, Georgia-Zoe Protogerou

Title: Proposal for an Information System of the Satellite Account of Education

Abstract

Many countries are looking for ways to cope with the general economic situation that prevails worldwide, to differentiate and become competitive, in order to ultimately ensure the sustainability of their societies. One of these ways is education and the establishment of higher education units, such as universities, colleges, etc., thus contributing to the economic and general development of a country.

The review of the existing literature revealed that in recent years more and more countries are investigating the effects of education using the Education Satellite Account. In Greece, to date, no study has been published that highlights the indirect and direct economic effects of education.

The importance of the present research lies in the pursuit of covering the research gap that exists in terms of the "automated", "fully connected" and "integrated" assessment of the economic effects of education on the sizes of an economy, especially the Greek one. It studies the indirect and direct economic effects (consumption, GDP, income, VAT and employment) of higher education at local and regional level. Specifically, higher education data was collected and analyzed for the prefectures that have at least one university institution, which belongs to a) the University of Ioannina, b) the University of Peloponnese or c) the International University.

The methodological framework used in this study is the Satellite Account of Education (S.A.E.), which is based on international rules and principles of human accounting. This system uses the same concepts, definitions and classifications as national accounts and is the internationally recognized framework for measuring educational activity and the importance of education for national, regional or local economies. While traditional education statistics focus mainly on "flows" (number of students, rental houses, etc.), the S.A.E. system it can show us how much education contributes to an economy and how many jobs it creates or supports. It is, in other words, a system designed to extend the analytical capacity of national accounts without overburdening them or hindering their general-purpose orientation. They add detail or additional information about a particular aspect of the economy, incorporating monetary and physical data, providing space for analytical purposes such as productivity analysis and macroeconomic modeling.

The development and application of the Satellite Account of Education, will contribute to:

1. provide an overall picture of the impact of universities on consumption, GDP, local income, VAT. and employment.
2. in different functions designed and integrated, covering the whole chain of the SAE drafting process: data collection, data management, SAE collection, statistical analysis and other extensive applications. Consistent rules are formulated for the generation and application of SAE results, which facilitate rigorous and robust comparisons of growth over time and space.
3. provide valuable information to governmental, industrial and academic bodies, on all activities affected by education, as well as on the impact of education on the National economy.