A Critical Appraisal of the Application of Systems Analysis to Educational Planning Models

This paper attempts to show that the applications to educational planning models of what is called systems analysis have been, thus far, unsuccessful. Several basic fallacies in previous works are cited. Attention is then focused on input-output analysis, an approach much favored in educational planning models. It is shown how misleading the results of input-output analysis can be. The paper concludes with an analogy and a suggestion that the real problems of educational planning should be attacked in the proper manner.