Education research has suffered from the lack of any coherent model of the education system. Traditional areas of research have developed largely along disciplinary lines, and, as a result, many important behavioral linkages have been neglected. From this, there has been little accumulation of knowledge useful to the development of education policy. This paper takes the perspective of an industry analysis and relates existing research to the natural questions about industry performance that arise from such a model. An important consideration is the issues that are neglected by traditional research lines.