In the confrontation of various trends in developed countries, a situation is emerging characterized by the fact that the absolute volume of expenditures on education and vocational training and retraining is increasing. As a result, the level of education and training is improved. In the United States, for example, the share of national income increased little from 1960 to 1990, while the share of expenditure on education is growing substantially, as is the share of expenditure on science.
Modern production needs educated people. To meet this need, industrialized countries are increasing their enrolment ratios year after year in relation to the total population. In the United States, from 1900 to 1990, the proportion of students relative to the population aged 5-17 increased from 78 to 95%.
Automated production requires people with at least secondary general education, continuing vocational training in numerous and multi-level courses of study and retraining in various professions. If in 1900 the number of graduates of secondary schools in the United States was 6.4% of the population aged 17 years, then in 1990 it rose to 80% of the population of this age group. As scientific and technological progress unfolds, the differences in the educational level of manual and mental workers are weakening. In the United States in 1990, the training period for manual workers ranged from 10.5 to 12.1 years (depending on the qualification group), for clerical and commercial employees – 12.6, and for administrative workers – 12.7 years.
In a socially stratified society, the general increase in the level of education does not remove social differences, but transfers them from the economic to the professional level: differences between people with different levels of knowledge. Economic stratification is decreasing due to higher pay for the more sophisticated work of highly educated workers. More significant is the sectoral and professional stratification associated with the social and professional status in the social hierarchy. Analysis of statistical data shows that the middle class, contrary to the predictions of K. Marx, during the XX century increased most intensively and the rate of this increase is higher than the growth rate of the number of hired workers.
The strengthening of the division of labor in industrialized countries is accompanied by an increase in sectoral and professional mobility, to a large extent due to the effectiveness of such a channel of social circulation as education. Secondary general education, which has a mass character, is a prerequisite for serious vocational training, and secondary and even more so higher specialized education gives a real chance to gain a foothold in the middle class of mobile society. The middle class, making up an average of 2/3 of the population of a civilized state, is a powerful social group that contributes to the achievement of social compromises through democratic institutions. Thus, the division of labor, encouraging the labor force to continuous sectoral and professional mobility, contributes simultaneously (by activating the channels of social circulation) to its social promotion and consolidation in the middle class of society. The latter becomes the guarantor of stable mechanisms for the development of social harmony, which in turn contribute to the further development of scientific, technical and social progress.