HUMAN-CAPITAL ISSUES IN THE USE OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY IN EDUCATION

Local technological applications and their implications for human capi tal depend not only on the local environment, but also on successively larger social structures. In a world with a complex international div ision of labor, events in distant countries now intimately affect the nation, states, cities, and social institutions. Indeed, the long-term effects of the chaotic world economy of the 1970s still ripple throug h the United States. They impact the national output, national indebte dness, the shift from federal to local responsibilities, and the overb ureaucratization and fast-paced technology of the megainstitutions whe re livelihoods are made and the quality of life is determined. The aut hors elaborate these themes, working from the most macroscopic or glob al level to the most microscopic or local level of social organization , and tie their discussion to data on international-, national-, and s tate-level trends. The authors explore a single but representative loc al case, which documents the impact of these megaforces on an educatio nal institution.