February 10th, 2015 -- The Secretary General of the Organization of American States (OAS), José Miguel Insulza, today highlighted the role of education as a central factor in advancing toward economic development and social equality, during the opening ceremony of the Third University Internationalization Seminar, organized by the hemispheric institution and the Coimbra Group of Brazilian Universities (GCUB) at OAS headquarters in Washington, DC.
Secretary General Insulza noted that to make progress in reducing poverty and inequality and to overcome the title of the world's most unequal region, Latin America and the Caribbean must understand that education "is an engine for integral growth and also for social inclusion and equity."
The OAS Secretary General cited a study by the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) that shows that high school education is the minimum level of education required to obtain a wage that allows people to overcome poverty and stay above it throughout their working life. He noted that "meanwhile, college education is increasingly becoming a precondition for drawing a salary above average in the economies of the region." Consequently, he said, "as shown by specialized studies, the labor market maintains a sustained demand for qualified people and grants greater pay to those with a college education, even in periods of slower economic growth."
The head of the hemispheric Organization said that while tertiary education has had a sustained expansion in the region, much remains to be done to reach the levels of the countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). As an example he cited the comparative data of OECD and ECLAC, according to which 42 percent of the college-age population in Latin America and the Caribbean is registered in a tertiary education, compared with 71 percent in the countries of the OECD. This –he continued-, despite the increase recorded in enrollment in recent decades: from two million college students in 1970 to 22 million in 2008.
He stressed that the number of public and private universities in the region increased from 75 in 1950 to more than 16,000 today, according to a study published by the Interuniversity Development Center (CINDA for its initials in Spanish) in 2011. "However, there is not a linear relationship between the level of development of countries and the degree of enrolment in its tertiary education system, measured by per capita gross national income," he said. "This raises serious questions about the ability of education systems in the region to respond to the needs of society through the production of relevant, comprehensible, relevant, replicable and available knowledge," he added.
In this regard, Secretary General Insulza said that societies demand of tertiary education primarily that it train competent staff to manage the most advanced knowledge in the various professions and technical fields. "Similarly it demands scientists and engineers able to participate in the production of new knowledge and to contribute to its use through innovation processes," he added.
At another point of his speech, Secretary General Insulza stressed the need to increase student exchanges within the region and with other regions. "According to CINDA, of every hundred mobile students in the world, only four will choose a country in Latin America, while seven are from the region and will choose to study outside of Latin America and the Caribbean," he said.
Secretary General Insulza recalled that, for decades, the OAS has carried out scholarship programs in the United States and Canada, noting that during the last decade more significant progress has been made: the annual number of students from the OAS Scholarship Program has tripled, from 570 to 1855, and major initiatives with Brazil and Mexico have been launched.
However, he said it is necessary "to complement these programs with greater integration efforts." "That's going to allow our countries to be less vulnerable to economic cycles, to have greater equality, and will allow us to shape the great nation to which we aspire in the coming decades," he said.
The Acting Representative of Brazil to the OAS, Breno Dias da Costa, said that his country wants to promote greater integration of Brazilian schools with other schools in the world. The Brazilian diplomat added that one of the priorities of the newly begun second term of the Brazilian President, Dilma Rousseff, is education, as the President herself expressed in her inaugural address in January.
For her part, OAS Executive Secretary for Integral Development, Sherry Tross, agreed with Secretary General Insulza that education is a key factor to solving the problems of inequality in the Western Hemisphere. "Our role as the region’s premier forum for multilateral dialogue is to facilitate and promote cooperation and the exchange of good practices among different actors,” said Executive Secretary Tross, who invited other universities from the private sector to follow the example of the Coimbra Group in partnership with the OAS to promote regional education.
Meanwhile, the Executive Director of GCUB, Rossana de Souza e Silva, said that although the OAS-GCUB scholarship program has only existed for four years, "it has achieved a major regional projection." The Executive Director of GCUB said it is essential that this initiative progress further in the region, and hoped that students from other Latin American and Caribbean countries that do a doctorate in her country "return home to develop their masters."
Luis Gabriel Cuervo, Senior Advisor on Research Promotion & Development at the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), noted for his part that the 5,000 applications to get a scholarship in Brazil through the OAS-GCUB program that recorded last year, "more than a thousand were related to postgraduate and master's degrees in health." Cuervo added that of the 500 scholarships awarded, "75 were assigned to medical students."
The Third University Internationalization Seminar, organized by the OAS Department of Human Development and Education is being carried out today and tomorrow, Tuesday, at the headquarters of the OAS; and will include three roundtables in which twenty experts in education from the Americas, Europe, Asia, and Africa will participate.
A gallery of photos of the event is available here.
For more information, please visit the OAS Website at www.oas.org.
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