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Mariano Jabonero: "More than half of the Latin American productivity gap is linked to education"

2022-04-09T03:53:20.075Z


The Secretary General of the OEI calls for adapting training programs to the needs of the productive sector and urges the establishment of "valid accreditation mechanisms" for universities in the region


The secretary general of the Organization of Ibero-American States for Education, Science and Culture (OEI), Mariano Jabonero (San Martín de Valdeiglesias, Madrid, 1953) attends EL PAÍS in the midst of the re-election process, confident that he will revalidate his position.

One idea is the focus of much of the talk, held at the headquarters of the body that oversees educational development in the bloc: the productivity gap with advanced economies.

“In the last 50 years it has hardly improved: it has even fallen.

It does not even reach 38% of the OECD average [the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a kind of study center for rich countries].

They are very, very low levels, ”he laments.

That is the starting point of the conversation, which continues for more than an hour.

Ask.

How much of that productivity gap has to do with education?

Response.

More than a half.

There is one that has to do with the economics of raw materials: it is sold without practically adding knowledge.

But there is a second part that has to do with what the classics called “human capital theory”: the quality levels of education in Latin America continue to be low.

It has improved, above all, in the quantitative part: the coverage of primary and basic education now reaches 100%.

But that only means that the boys go to a school, nothing more.

P.

Is it a problem of higher education?

R.

80% of the skills that students in the region acquire there have nothing to do with those required by the productive sector.

It's nonsense.

There is a very clear lack of relevance in terms of supply for the production system.

A very graphic example: we are the region with the highest agricultural production in the world, but the graduates of careers related to that world are only 2% of the total.

There are [Latin American] countries that import experts on agricultural issues because they don't have people.

P.

And everything, despite the strong growth of Latin American universities.

Both in number and size.

R.

The offer has grown disproportionately: there are already almost 4,000 higher education institutions that sometimes opt for a lower cost type of training offer.

It is much cheaper to buy a blackboard than to set up a laboratory.

The offer is very wide in terms of quantity, but quality is one of the problems we have in the region.

And, in addition, this is very little linked to the world of research: the most successful is the applied one, the one that has to do with technology, with genetics or with the digital world, and there the region has a level of presence very low.

Another very graphic fact: in the universities of Latin America, the percentage of professors-doctors does not reach 50% and there are countries in which it is below 10%.

They are universities with little capacity to investigate,

despite the fact that more than 60% of the research in the region is done in universities.

It's a complicated loop.

Q.

What can be done to change this dynamic?

R.

The first thing is to improve the standards: valid accreditation mechanisms must be established.

And we must also work on distance education, which has grown by 87% in the last 10 years compared to 20% in face-to-face education.

That is why we propose to create a seal that, through the indicators, can certify to the public that what is offered is of quality.

P.

There is, instead, a bunch of universities capable of competing with the best.

A.

Without a doubt: there are several centers in Latin America, many of them public, that are among the best in the world: UNAM in Mexico, the National University of Colombia, Buenos Aires, Río Piedras in Puerto Rico... There are very good examples of reference universities.

More information

The quality of education stagnates in Latin America, according to UNESCO

P.

How much has the pandemic changed the Latin American educational landscape?

R.

Very significantly.

There were 180 million students, boys, girls and university students, who were confined and without educational continuity.

It is the region in which the most class time has been lost: 1.8 billion hours.

More than two years have passed and there are still countries in the region that have not yet returned to class.

The Secretary General of the United Nations said it and I corroborate it: it is a generational catastrophe.

There has been a loss of enrollment and higher dropout rates.

And it also has a medium and long-term effect: the impact of the pandemic on student salaries is going to be negative.

Q.

How is it affecting demographics?

R.

The registration boom is going to loosen.

ECLAC believes that investment in education will benefit from the demographic dividend: same public investment, but with less population.

But the universities in the region are going to have a drastic reconfiguration that I think is sometimes not aware of.

They are going to change and some will not continue: by losing enrollment, they will not be sustainable.

There are demographic reasons, but also technological and mismatch with the production system.

P.

Beyond the university, how is the technical training?

R.

It is an area that has had little development, with the exceptions of Uruguay, Argentina or Colombia.

In the rest it is very weak.

For families, the fact that their children have a career is a guarantee that they will live better and also something aspirational.

In Latin America, 70% of higher education students come from families in which no one had gone to university: they are the first.

That is, for example, the case of Brazil, where those who came out of poverty with the government of [Luiz Inácio] Lula [da Silva] thought that enrolling their children in university was a guarantee for the future.

The problem is when, after finishing, they had to work as taxi drivers: the frustration is enormous.

Or when, now with the pandemic, they have to go back to help at home and contribute more income.

Q.

Why doesn't professional training take off?

R.

It has been raised late and precariously.

At the OIE we have worked on designing the programs of 14 countries in the region, and most have not gone beyond the framework of competence.

I go back to what I said at the beginning: in the region the priority has been quantitative, putting boys and girls in school.

Q.

Mobility is also one of the pending issues in the region.

Both students and teachers.

A.

Yes. We have been talking about shared knowledge spaces for decades, but we are the second region in the world with the least academic mobility.

The mobility that exists, said in very clear terms, is for the rich: people who go to the United States and Europe.

Q.

When will the long-awaited Latin American Erasmus arrive?

R.

In the EU, it costs billions and [in Latin America] there are none.

There is no shared fund to finance it, the governments —with exceptions— also do not have incentives in the form of national scholarships and, furthermore, the family economy is not the same as in Europe: there is no per capita income of 30,000 or 40,000 euros... And there is another problem, of accreditation: if, for example, a student from Panama goes to study in Mexico and his university of origin does not later recognize what he has done there.

The previous step to mobility is that there is a common metric.

P.

When will that obstacle be overcome?

R.

It is a process of five or six years, but real political commitments are needed, not just rhetoric.

P.

Does that mean that by 2030 a program like Erasmus could already be underway in Latin America?

A.

Yes, I think so.

Q.

Common language can help.

A.

A lot.

In the region we have a very important factor, which is Spanish.

It is not necessary to use a lingua franca, as is the case in Europe with English.

And that makes things easier: we are a community of more than 800 million people who speak Spanish and Portuguese.

P.

Let's talk about the demographic part: is it already beginning to be noticed in the classrooms of the region?

R.

Yes. It is something that is going to be unstoppable in the next 15 or 20 years.

Q.

How concerned are you about the talent drain?

R.

I think it has moderated, it has slowed down: it is not as much as before.

To the extent that wages have risen in the region and employment conditions are better than they were, more people are left with a decent salary in their country.

Also because some policies that were carried out in the past and that were not successful have been interrupted.

The most famous case is that of Venezuela, which in its time of oil boom gave scholarships to students to go to universities around the world, and many of them stayed out and never came back.

Now all that is already very limited.

Where it has not slowed down is in the case of high-level researchers: there it is very difficult to retain talent in the region.

P.

But the salary bonus provided by education is still lower in Latin American countries than in other geographical areas.

R.

It is that this plus is produced when training and education is, let's say, pertinent to the productive system.

If not, the productive system will not value something that does not serve it.

It ends up producing an “infantilization of qualifications”: that a graduate ends up working at something of a much lower level.

People who are overqualified or simply inadequately qualified.

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Source: elparis

All news articles on 2022-04-09

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