The Great Recession has raised concerns about future economic growth. A possible remedy that was suggested was an educational reform, which will increase the stock of high skilled workers. In this paper we test if such a reform has a level or a growth rate effect. Focusing on this question, we construct a variant standard growth model in which human capital has theoretically both a level and growth rate effects by assumption. Estimating this model using standard cross-country data and panel data, human capital measured by the methodology of Hanushek and Woessmann (2015) has a significant level effect on GDP per worker but not a growth effect. Therefore, the human capital improvement impact on economic growth is bounded.