Rewriting the economics of education

When international development economists evaluate school systems, they often measure the most visible inputs: the number of classrooms constructed, teachers hired, or years children sit behind a desk. But for nearly four decades, Professor Paul Glewwe has pushed the discipline to look past surface-level metrics to answer a far more fundamental and urgent question: Are children actually learning?

Glewwe, a Regents Professor, Distinguished McKnight Professor, and  Distinguished University Teaching Professor in the Department of Applied Economics at the University of Minnesota’s College of Food, Agricultural and Natural Resource Sciences (CFANS), has dedicated his career to uncovering the real barriers to quality education across more than 15 countries. His pioneering work — ranging from evaluating vision health in China to analyzing the impact of physical school infrastructure in Ghana — has earned him the 2026 Yidan Prize for Education Research, the world’s highest education accolade.

Breakfast conversations and unfiltered data

Glewwe’s turn toward global education was not initially planned. In the late 1980s, while working for the World Bank, he was assigned to help Ghana design and implement detailed household surveys known as Living Standards Measurement Study (LSMS) surveys. At the time, his research focused broadly on living standards rather than schooling.

However, informal conversations over breakfast at his hotel in Ghana with World Bank colleagues working on education altered his career trajectory. They shared a troubling observation: students in local schools were learning very little, and frustrated parents were beginning to feel that formal schooling was no longer worth the investment of time and money.

Intrigued, Glewwe secured research funding in the survey's second year to collect detailed data on schools, students, and parents, even administering math and reading tests directly to children and their parents. The results were stark and unambiguous. Students were indeed learning remarkably little, a failure that translated directly into diminished earning potential later in adulthood. This finding sparked a lifelong commitment to identifying which education policies truly work — and which ones fail.

The Kenyan textbook paradox

In the mid-1990s, while still at the World Bank, Glewwe collaborated with economist Michael Kremer (who would later co-win the 2019 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences) to conduct some of the earliest randomized controlled trials (RCTs) on basic education in rural Kenya.

Their first study addressed a seemingly obvious need: providing official government textbooks to rural students whose families could not afford them. The team expected clear evidence that access to books boosted learning. To their surprise, the trial revealed that free textbooks had zero impact on average student test scores.

Investigating further, Glewwe and Kremer discovered a glaring reason: the vast majority of students in grades 3 through 8 could not read the textbooks in the first place. Because the students had fallen so far behind in foundational literacy, official curriculum materials were useless to almost everyone except the top-performing students. The trial delivered a profound lesson to development economists worldwide: providing physical educational materials accomplishes nothing if children lack the foundational skills required to use them.

Expanding the scope of development economics

Throughout his career, Glewwe has consistently anticipated major shifts in development economics. Long before non-cognitive skills and social-emotional learning (SEL) became mainstream priorities, he was among the first economists to evaluate their impact on educational outcomes in lower-income countries.

Glewwe found that while convincing policymakers of SEL's importance was relatively straightforward, designing effective interventions was far more complex. In Indonesia, his research showed that child sponsorship programs operated by Compassion International had strong positive impacts on children's non-cognitive development and long-term outcomes. In contrast, a later program in Morocco that engaged students in discussions with school counselors produced very little measurable effect, demonstrating the necessity of rigorous empirical evaluation for every unique context.

Glewwe’s work also crossed conventional disciplinary boundaries by examining basic health barriers like vision care. Yet introducing healthcare solutions into education policy often encountered bureaucratic inertia. Education ministries frequently argued that vision tests and eyeglasses were the responsibility of health ministries. Even when school vision screenings occurred, parents often failed to follow up by purchasing glasses — sometimes due to poverty, and sometimes due to deep-seated cultural misconceptions, such as the belief in parts of China that wearing glasses at a young age permanently weakens a child's eyesight. Despite decades of persistent research by Glewwe and others, such as Scott Rozelle at Stanford University, convincing national education authorities to institutionalize vision care remains an ongoing battle.

Deep roots at CFANS

Glewwe attributes much of his sustained research output to his institutional home in the Department of Applied Economics at CFANS. Over the past six decades, economics as a discipline has significantly broadened its scope, applying statistical and econometric models to non-traditional social issues. CFANS supported this interdisciplinary ethos, allowing Glewwe to publish his findings in top-tier economic journals while tackling real-world social problems.

At the University of Minnesota, Glewwe has long taught PhD-level econometrics — the advanced statistical methodology used to analyze complex economic and social data. He notes that teaching this demanding curriculum to generations of graduate students has kept his own quantitative skills sharp, ensuring that his research remains at the cutting edge of global development.

The next chapter: Technology and AI in the classroom 

The Yidan Prize includes a major unrestricted project fund designed to scale innovative educational research. As Glewwe considers his next chapter, he is turning his focus toward one of the most urgent questions facing modern education globally: how to effectively integrate digital technologies — including computers, mobile devices, the internet, and artificial intelligence — into learning.

"One big question in global education, including in the U.S., is how to best use modern information technology to increase student learning, especially their critical thinking skills," Glewwe observes. "I think that these technologies, if used wisely, can be very effective, but if misused they could be ineffective or even harmful to students' learning."

With new tools emerging faster than researchers can evaluate them, Glewwe plans to apply the same empirical rigor he brought to textbooks and vision tests decades ago to the digital tools shaping classrooms today — ensuring that modern technology leads to genuine learning for all children.