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| Caribbean-Latin America |
| Short of Skilled Workers, Brazilian Companies School Future Workforce |
| 2008-12-10 |
| Fabiana Nunes Rodrigues didn't know much about trains. But she wanted a good job, she said, something stable, maybe as a mechanic, like her grandfather. Brazilian college courses didn't offer much in the way of technical instruction. But one company in her home town did, and she already knew it well. Since she was 15, Rodrigues had spent her afternoons in technical classes sponsored by the mining giant Vale, the world's largest producer of iron ore. So it made sense that when she graduated from high school she would enroll in Vale's nine-month train maintenance course on this vast corporate campus on a rise above the Atlantic Ocean. "I've always wanted to work for Vale," said Rodrigues, 18, standing in a maintenance facility where cranes were lifting hulking metal tubing from a train engine. "Now many of my friends want to take this class, too." Vale also wants people like Rodrigues, and is willing to do a lot to get them. With more than 150,000 employees worldwide, it is one of several large corporations in fields such as mining, aerospace and construction that are driving Brazil's ascent in the world economy. But the firms' ambitious plans for growth have bumped into a problem hampering development across Latin America: a higher education system that does not churn out enough engineers and others with technical skills, even as the global economic crisis depresses demand. Despite being one of the world's most populous countries, Brazil does not have a single university ranked in the top 100 internationally. Of its college graduates, 5 percent are engineers, far below the rates of countries such as China and South Korea, according to Brazilian businesses. |
| Posted by:Fred |