and the Findings of a Linear Programming Model

In this study the role of education in economic development is briefly discussed; the state of education in Afghanistan is assessed and compared with a group of Asian countries. Through the application of a constrained maxi-mization model the rate of return to primary education in Afghanistan is obtained. Discounted streams of in-come and cost, associated with different levels of edu-cation, were used as the coefficients of the equation which was set to maximize the return to education; the different categories of students and the needed teachers constrained the maximization of the afore-mentioned equation. The model thus described was also dynamic--given a group of youngsters it advanced them to higher levels of education and also generated the required number of teachers from those students. Education in the elementary level is found to be a profitable investment for Afghanistan to undertake. The rate of return to six years of education in this model is more than five percent and for the first three years it is more than ten percent