The president of Insper, Marcelo Knobel, was one of the guests at a live launch of issue 95 of Universidades magazine, published by the Union of Universities of Latin America and the Caribbean (Udualc). To present a look at technological education in the region, Raúl Rojas, professor of artificial intelligence at the Free University of Berlin, Germany, and Enrique Fernández Fassnacht, edition coordinator and director-general of the National Polytechnic Institute and the National Technological Institute of Mexico, also participated in the panel on April 13.
During the event, it was possible to identify common points in higher education in the various countries that make up the association. In Mexico, for example, the law allocates 8% of GDP to investments in the public education sector. In 2021, however, this rate is 3.3%, said Raúl Rojas. The professor said that this deficit results in a decline in the quality of public schools and, consequently, the migration of children from the middle and upper classes to private education.
Knobel commented that the situation in higher education in Brazil is not much different from that seen in other countries in the region. “Only 20% of Brazilians aged 18-24 are enrolled in any university, and 77% of these young people are in private universities, many of them for-profit institutions.”
Moreover, in Brazil, for the first time in history, more than half of the students enrolled in higher education attend distance learning courses, a trend that began to be observed even before the exponential growth of remote learning during the pandemic. Now common in education, recorded or webcast classes were one of the solutions adopted in the period of social isolation caused by the spread of covid-19.
For Knobel, this had some consequences in terms of quality, the possibility of technical learning itself, and access to laboratories and equipment. “This technical learning is absolutely essential and necessary to form a fundamental workforce for the progress and future of our countries,” he said. But the reality of education has proven to be more complex.
About a decade ago, Brazil began discussing increasing the number of places in Engineering courses, in order to double the number of engineers in the country, Knobel recalled. The intention was to expand the number of professionals in sectors essential to economic growth, such as industry, information technology and infrastructure. “The problem is that we have a basic education that is not compatible with this reality.”
Since the time of this discussion, school performance in math has not changed all that much. In Brazil, less than 1% of the 15-year-old students who take the Programme for International Student Assessment (Pisa) exam score the equivalent of 5 or 6 – considered the minimum qualifications for a young person to attend university.
Knobel explained: “This means that less than 1% of 15-year-olds in Brazil have the capacity and ability in mathematics for higher education. Something like 250,000 young people. It is very little. Today we have, in Brazil, more than 500,000 openings in Engineering courses alone. In other words, the discussion about increasing the number of vacancies in Engineering, about expanding the possibilities for young people, makes no sense, because there are not enough qualified young people to keep up with the minimum level of calculus, arithmetic, and basic mathematics in a university.
The discussion of higher education ends up addressing the same point, in Knobel’s opinion: the improvement of education as a whole, to take care of the formation of young people at all educational levels. For him, it is also necessary to recognize in this debate the importance of technological education, which prepares professionals in three or four-year courses.
“Unfortunately, in many cases, these young people are not recognized by industry companies as equivalent to an Engineering graduate,” said the president of Insper. “Often, to help with his family’s income, the young person needs a more technical and faster training to take on technological jobs that are absolutely essential for the country.”
Brazil has 2,457 institutions of higher education, records one of the articles published in issue 95 of Universidades magazine. In Mexico there are about 6,000, with performances ranging from good to very bad, noted Professor Enrique Fassnacht. He said that technological education in Mexico has been partly undermined by the rush to create an intermediate level between polytechnics and universities, permeated by decisions that were more political than academic. However, Fassnacht believes that it is still time to reorganize higher education in search of better quality throughout the region. All the panelists agree that there are problems, but that there are already studies and experiences that can guide the way to solutions.