A health system, health care system or healthcare system is an organization of people, institutions, and resources that delivers health care services to meet the health needs of target populations.
In the United States, education is provided in public and private schools and by individuals through homeschooling. State governments set overall educational standards, often mandate standardized tests for K–12 public school systems and supervise, usually through a board of regents, state colleges, and universities. The bulk of the $1.3 trillion in funding comes from state and local governments, with federal funding accounting for about $260 billion in 2021 compared to around $200 billion in past years.
Public finance refers to the monetary resources available to governments and also to the study of finance within government and role of the government in the economy. As a subject of study, it is the branch of economics which assesses the government revenue and government expenditure of the public authorities and the adjustment of one or the other to achieve desirable effects and avoid undesirable ones. The purview of public finance is considered to be threefold, consisting of governmental effects on:
- The efficient allocation of available resources;
- The distribution of income among citizens; and
- The stability of the economy.
Governance is the overall complex system or framework of processes, functions, structures, rules, laws and norms born out of the relationships, interactions, power dynamics and communication within an organized group of individuals which not only sets the boundaries of acceptable conduct and practices of different actors of the group and controls their decision-making processes through the creation and enforcement of rules and guidelines, but also manages, allocates and mobilizes relevant resources and capacities of different members and sets the overall direction of the group in order to effectively address its specific collective needs, problems and challenges. The concept of governance can be applied to social, political or economic entities such as a state and its government, a governed territory, a society, a community, a social group, a formal or informal organization, a corporation, a non-governmental organization, a non-profit organization, a project team, a market, a network or even the global stage. "Governance" can also pertain to a specific sector of activities such as land, environment, health, internet, security, etc. The degree of formality in governance depends on the internal rules of a given entity and its external interactions with similar entities. As such, governance may take many forms, driven by many different motivations and with many different results.
The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) is a worldwide study by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in member and non-member nations intended to evaluate educational systems by measuring 15-year-old school pupils' scholastic performance on mathematics, science, and reading. It was first performed in 2000 and then repeated every three years. Its aim is to provide comparable data with a view to enabling countries to improve their education policies and outcomes. It measures problem solving and cognition.
Research funding is a term generally covering any funding for scientific research, in the areas of natural science, technology, and social science. Different methods can be used to disburse funding, but the term often connotes funding obtained through a competitive process, in which potential research projects are evaluated and only the most promising receive funding. It is often measured via Gross domestic expenditure on R&D (GERD).
Education policy consists of the principles and policy decisions that influence the field of education, as well as the collection of laws and rules that govern the operation of education systems. Education governance may be shared between the local, state, and federal government at varying levels. Some analysts see education policy in terms of social engineering.
New public management (NPM) is an approach to running public service organizations that is used in government and public service institutions and agencies, at both sub-national and national levels. The term was first introduced by academics in the UK and Australia to describe approaches that were developed during the 1980s as part of an effort to make the public service more "businesslike" and to improve its efficiency by using private sector management models.
Capacity building is the improvement in an individual's or organization's facility "to produce, perform or deploy". The terms capacity building and capacity development have often been used interchangeably, although a publication by OECD-DAC stated in 2006 that capacity development was the preferable term. Since the 1950s, international organizations, governments, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and communities use the concept of capacity building as part of "social and economic development" in national and subnational plans. The United Nations Development Programme defines itself by "capacity development" in the sense of "'how UNDP works" to fulfill its mission. The UN system applies it in almost every sector, including several of the Sustainable Development Goals to be achieved by 2030. For example, the Sustainable Development Goal 17 advocates for enhanced international support for capacity building in developing countries to support national plans to implement the 2030 Agenda.
Governance in higher education is the means by which institutions for higher education are formally organized and managed. Simply, university governance is the way in which universities are operated. Governing structures for higher education are highly differentiated throughout the world, but the different models nonetheless share a common heritage. Internationally, tertiary education includes private not-for-profit, private for-profit, and public institutions governed by differentiated structures of management.
Education economics or the economics of education is the study of economic issues relating to education, including the demand for education, the financing and provision of education, and the comparative efficiency of various educational programs and policies. From early works on the relationship between schooling and labor market outcomes for individuals, the field of the economics of education has grown rapidly to cover virtually all areas with linkages to education.
The European social model is a concept that emerged in the discussion of economic globalization and typically contrasts the degree of employment regulation and social protection in European countries to conditions in the United States. It is commonly cited in policy debates in the European Union, including by representatives of both labour unions and employers, to connote broadly "the conviction that economic progress and social progress are inseparable" and that "[c]ompetitiveness and solidarity have both been taken into account in building a successful Europe for the future".
The Sustainable Governance Indicators (SGI), first published in spring 2009 and updated in 2011, analyze and compare the need for reform in Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) member countries, as well as each country's ability to respond to current social and political challenges. The project is designed to create a comprehensive data pool on government-related activities in the countries considered the world's most developed free-market democracies. In addition, it uses international comparisons to provide evidence-based input for reform-related public discourse taking place in these countries. The SGI are updated every two or three years.
In the study of innovation systems, a regional innovation system (RIS) encourages the rapid diffusion of knowledge, skills and best practice within a geographic area larger than a city, but smaller than a nation. The edge of a regional innovation system may be drawn conceptually and organizationally around the economic, social, political and institutional relationships that generate a collective learning process within a related group of technological or functional areas.
Educational equity, also known as equity in education, is a measure of equity in education. Educational equity depends on two main factors. The first is distributive justice, which implies that factors specific to one's personal conditions should not interfere with the potential of academic success. The second factor is inclusion, which refers to a comprehensive standard that applies to everyone in a certain education system. These two factors are closely related and depend on each other for an educational system's success. Education equity can include the study of excellence and equity.
A new measure of expected human capital calculated for 195 countries from 1990 to 2016 and defined for each birth cohort as the expected years lived from age 20 to 64 years and adjusted for educational attainment, learning or education quality, and functional health status was published by The Lancet in September 2018. Latvia had the twenty-first highest level of expected human capital with 23 health, education, and learning-adjusted expected years lived between age 20 and 64 years.
Open educational resources (OER) are learning materials that reside in the public domain or have been released under an intellectual property license that permits their free use and re-purposing by others. OER policies are adopted by governments, institutions or organisations in support of the creation and use of open content, specifically open educational resources (OER), and related open educational practices.
Independent Public Schools (IPS) refers to an education reform first introduced in Western Australia in 2009 by the state's Department of Education. An independent public school is a state/public school that, while a part of the state education system, has been granted a higher degree of decision-making authority than a regular, non-independent state school. The term, Independent Public School, has been increasingly used by other state governments in Australia, such as Queensland, to label similar reforms to the governance of their state schools. Federal Australian governments also use the term Independent Public Schools. In February 2014 the Federal Education Minister, Christopher Pyne, announced a $70 million Independent Public Schools Initiative to support 1,500 state schools across Australia to become more autonomous.
Government competitiveness is a state capacity concept created by Tobin Im, a scholar of public administration and a professor at the Graduate School of Public Administration at Seoul National University. Since 2011, Center for Government Competitiveness (CGC) at Seoul National University has developed the Government Competitiveness (GC) index which evaluates government achievements in the various fields and furthermore provides policy recommendations to increase competitiveness of government in the future.
Child care indicators are sets of standards that act as indicators of quality child care. These standards are developed by governments, child care experts, pediatricians, and parent advocacy groups. This information is useful for parents who are seeking quality child care and for directors and staff working in child care settings for ensuring quality settings and programs.
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Golden, Gillian; Troy, Lisa; Weko, Thomas (2021) How Are Higher Education Systems in OECD Countries Resourced? Evidence from an OECD Policy Survey. OECD Education Working Papers [2]
Hossler, Donald; Rabourn, Karyn E.;Siskin, Mary B. (2018) Performance-Based Funding of Higher Education: Analyses of Policy Discourse Across Four Case Studies. Journal for Critical Education Policy Studies. [3]
Weinreb, Yaniv; Yemini, Miri (2023) Navigating academic habits in a higher education system that prioritizes external funding - the case of Israel. Studies in Higher Education. [4]
