The conference that brings us together today at Marbach Castle has sought to make a reasonable place for economics. But what can economics reasonably add to the work of sociologists of education, psychologists, and, more broadly, the educational sciences? This is the question that has guided my investigation.

For some time now, economics has occupied a dominant position among the social sciences. This has certainly not always been justified, but it is true. Are we to explain it by the economists’ claim to measure and theorize? By our increasingly market-oriented and liberal societies that are preoccupied with the values of material wealth? Economics is thus continuously solicited (or perhaps imposes itself) to measure everything that can efficiently contribute to the accumulation of wealth, notably individual wealth.

The success of economic science over the past 30 years can be explained by the impressive growth of production and mass consumption in the developed countries, followed by the crisis of this form of growth. In the remarks that follow, I shall attempt to examine what economics has to say about this crisis, and in particular about the role of education in the creation of a new system of production and growth.

I shall begin by summarizing the main features of Fordism and its crisis, as well as its consequences on the wage-skills nexus and the institutional forms that surround it, including the educational system. This will be followed by a quick survey of the way economics has sought to interpret education and training as factors of growth, as an investment in human capital, and as a mechanism of selection and standardization.