How Brazil develops its technical skills:
Strengths and weaknesses
Claudio de Moura Castro
In a period of less than one century, Brazil has gone from a traditional producer
of commodities to a country displaying a broad variety of activities, including a
diversified manufacturing sector and a highly competitive agro-business.
Thanks to favourable natural endowments and serious R&D, it ranks in the top
three in the export of several commodities. It also ranks among the top five
automobile manufacturers and has the third largest commercial airplanes
factory. These days, manufacturing is losing ground to agro-business, but it is
premature to talk about deindustrialization.
Considering the above examples, something must have been done right, in order
to prepare the requisite labour for its Industrial Revolution and then,its Green
Revolution.Nevertheless, there are also many problems and perplexities in the
education and training systems. Or better said, in the several and intricate
systems and “non-systems”.
This paper is a review of how this complex system of education and training was
developed and how it stands now. It examines the main players in skills training,
the technical education system, under the Ministry of Education (henceforth
MEC) and a huge and invisible training and education “non-system”
The Training and Education split
Historically, education develops the Mind - and has little to do with preparing the
Hands. To structure and manage the sprawling network of schools, Ministries of
Education (or equivalent bureaucracies with different names) were established,
in just about all countries. This world has its bureaucratic idiosyncrasies, its
values and its political identity.
Training originates fromthe “learn by doing” tradition, progressively formalized
in the Apprenticeship traditions. In the beginning, it was just training the Hands.
Therefore, whatever oversight there was, it had little to do with the educational
authorities. Ministries of Labour filled the void and, in many cases, created and
managed the appropriate institutions.
Hence, education management and supervision have been a role for the Ministry
of Education and skills preparation an affair of theMinistry of Labour. What may
look only as a bureaucratic convenience turns out to be a major cultural and
sociological cleavage.Stubbornly, these two worlds no not mix well or do not mix
at all.
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The education establishment disdains manual activities, thinks little of its
preparation and tends to have prejudice or even ideological resistance to the
world of work and the productive sectors. In practice, whenever it tries to offer
work preparation, the practical end suffers. By contrast, the skills world has
lower status, but little patience towards the lofty words and lack of practicality of
educators.
The frontier between these two worlds has always been conflictive, as illustrated
by decades-long bickering between UNESCO and ILO. However, much
preparation for the world of work takes place under the banner of education
authorities. Systematically, attempts to obtain a seamless blending of the two
worlds have failed miserably - at least, as far as my knowledge goes. Training
that takes place inside Education bureaucracies tends to have innate weaknesses
and be treated as the poor cousin.
Brazil exhibits this traditional split, but with some particular features of its own.
All vocational or skills training falls under the supervision of the Ministry of
Labour, like almost everywhere. However, the situation is more complex than
that. There is more theory than practice in this statement.
As explained later, the bulk of the training system is private, under the
ownership and responsibility of employers’ associations – even though the
funding is public. This is the well-known “System S” – because all its many
bodies have names starting with the word Serviços (services). However, while it
is legally under the oversight of the Ministry of Labour, in practice, this Ministry
has hardly any power over it. Consider that the joint budget of these institutions
is several times larger than that of the Ministry and the quality, stability and
strength of the staff much higher.
What matters here is the fact that System S is not under the legal supervision of
MEC and, as stated above, the Ministry of Labour, de facto, has hardly any power
over it. System S has its own logic and whatever certificates are produced have
nothing to do with education or even with official diplomas. For all practical
purposes, it is a highly organized but unregulated system. It is a world of its own,
mostly for good.
However, the situation is a bit more complicated with technical education. Like
in most countries, as oneclimbs higher in the hierarchy of skills, one unavoidably
ends up in the technical education diplomas, which combine academic degrees
with work preparation. These are varieties of the well-known technical and short
post-secondary programs.And wherever academic degrees are involved,
education authorities have thelegal oversight.
This means that when the System S offers courses that are regulated by MEC, it
must conform to its legislation and procedures. Considering the constant
upgrading of skills, the growth of this formula is an unavoidable tendency in
Brazil- and worldwide. However, MEC does not have any more power over
System S than it does over the proprietary private sector in general.
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To sum up, the Hand and the Mind are each under sociological and ideological
traditions that are quite different and cannot be ignored. In the Brazilian
situation, this split is clear and reflected in the division of labour between MEC
and System S. In the overlapping areas, there is an acceptable Pax Romana.
The “System S”, createdto prepare skilled workers
World War II caught Brazil well into the process to develop its own
manufacturing system. The war effort in the northern Hemisphere created a
severe scarcity of just about all types of industrial products. This brought a
natural protection to shelter the local infant industry, accelerating growth.
The history of SENAI
Going in tandem with the backward education of the country, there were hardly
any programs to train skilled workers. As scarcity of skilled labour started to hit
industrial development, a major controversy took place: Who is going to be in
charge of vocational training and what model to adopt?
Educators wanted to bring training under the umbrella of the Ministry of
Education. Employers wanted to be in charge of this task. After protracted
battles, a solution was found, totally different from what happens anywhere else
in the world – even today.
The government decided that employers’ associations would do the training and
they would follow their own schemes,independent from education authorities. In
so many words, training would be done by the private sector. However, the
funding would be public, being provided by a 1% levy on the payroll. If not the
first, this was one of the earlier examples of this form of financing for training.
The first institution of this dynasty was SENAI (in São Paulo, where
manufacturing was farther ahead in the country),given the task of training
industrial workers. It tapped on the experience of railroad training traditions,
the most advanced and structured at the time. The first manager was a Swiss
engineer, from the watchmaking canton of that country. Therefore, a strong
mechanical tradition from Switzerland and Germany was brought in, early in the
development of SENAI.
Subsequently, each of the Brazilian states (today, reaching 27) developed its own
SENAI, following the same pattern but with considerable independence from one
another. A central SENAI was created, with the task of coordinating the state
branches, but with only a moderate power to impose common policies. All in all,
it is a very decentralized system.
The so-called “Methodical Series”, then popular in Europe, was adopted at the
workshops of all trades taught. This consists in organizing the courses as a series
of increasingly complex practical projects. Each project incorporates learning in
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manual skills, blueprint,drafting, technology and all else that is required –
including reading, writing and Mathematics. In so many words, SENAI developed
in the forties a robust version of what is called today Problem-Based Learning
(PBL). A very detailed package for each course was developed, allowing new
schools to reproduce the method without unduly serious difficulties. This system
was so successful that it was translated into Spanish and adopted by just about
all Latin American countries.
The provision of a budget without the uncertainties of government moods towards assigning funds to ministries - allowed for a long run planning horizon
and the development of a high calibre staff, with plenty esprit de corps. This has
been an invaluable asset, as every so often, SENAI gets hit by left-wing ideologies,
protesting against its private ownership. There have also been attempts of MEC
to kidnap its substantial budgets. Since its creation, in 1942, it has resisted all
these assaults, counting also with substantial help from business associations.
Expansion of System S
The instant success of SENAI prompted the government to create equivalent
bodies for other sectors of the economy. In the late forties, SENAC was created,
for the commercial sectors. Subsequently, a rural equivalent was also created
(SENAR) and one for small firms (SEBRAE). The transportation system split from
SENAI, creating SENAT. SENAR and SEBRAE were created as public
bureaucracies but itsutter inefficacity lead the government to change its mind
and privatize them, like the others.
From the beginning, SENAI focused on the training of skilled labour, in the
classical occupations, like woodworkers, machinists, electricians and so on. The
trade trainingwas always combined with some provision of basic skills
(language, math etc.).
Apprenticeship. When created, SENAI put much emphasis on apprenticeship
schemes. After all, vocational training is an offshoot from spontaneous
apprenticeship. But unfortunately, in the attempt to protect apprentices from
abuse, the growing amount of regulation ended up making it a bad proposition
for employers. These days, apprenticeship is only a residual mode of preparing
labour these days.
But this is not the only problem with apprenticeship. Under fast
industrialization, these schemes do not permit a fast growth in supply. It is
bound by the relatively small number of people with the profile to become
masters. Therefore, classroom cum workshop models thrived early on.
Gender issues. The doctorate is the only level of academic education in Brazil in
which women do not predominate. Even there, the difference is narrowing very
fast. But in vocational training, there is still a substantial difference in the gender
balance. Skilled manual occupations remain predominantly (but not entirely)
male, while teaching, nursing, secretarial and a few other occupations are
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typically feminine. Nonetheless, we should remember that the women are in
occupations that grow, while blue-collar occupations are mostly stagnant or
shrinking.
Certification. The existence of an all-powerful SENAI has had a negative impact in
all the succeeding efforts to create a certification or Qualification Framework, so
popular these days. The quality of the SENAI courses have always been
recognized – for instance, some firms looking for new employees may state in
the adds that only SENAI graduates will be considered. Therefore, those firms
that want to know whom they are hiring will tend to consider SENAI certificates
as sufficient evidence of quality.
For decades, the Ministry of Labour has been talking about the creation of a
certification system. For a number of reasons, including the prestige of the SENAI
certificates, this idea never materialized. That being the case, the idea of
recognizing prior learning is even more remote. Official rhetoric, as well as
UNESCO and ILO still repeat this mantra. It is in the law, but nothing has
happened and it is unlikely that it will happen in a foreseeable future.
On the other hand, there is a new certification wave, under the banner of the ISO
norms – and its counterpart in Brazil. For instance, pipeline welding is a trade
certified by ISO, through its accredited organizations. Recently, adventure
tourism also adopted this system of ISO certification. Needless to say, the
Ministry of Labour and MEC have stayed outside all these parallel efforts.
Numbers and Resources.The volume of resources mobilized by the System S is
quite significant. In the year xxx US$, the total budget was xxx US$, broken down
as xxx US$ for SENAI, xxxUS$ for SENAC, XXX US$ for SEBRAE, xxxUS$ for
SENAR and xxx US$ for SENAT.
With these resources, the three systems trained xxx participants, in programs of
widely different durations. Given this heterogeneity in duration, it is difficult to
make meaningful comparisons with education statistic.
It is interesting to notice that SENAI and SENAC, in addition to what they do with
their regular budgets, sell services to industry and accept individual students
who pay for some of the courses. In the case of SENAI, in addition to the 1%
budget, it generated xxx million in selling courses and other services to industry.
In the case of SENAC, XX% of their budget comes in addition to the 1% revenue.
Strengths and weaknesses of the System S
Most observers in the international scene consider SENAI a model institution.
For a country of very modest achievements in education, to have an institution
that easily reaches international levels is a source of national pride. In my own
observation, after visiting over a hundred institutions, almost everywhere in the
world, this perception is confirmed.
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SENAI has ranked consistently among the top three institutions in the World
Skills Competition. Granted, performing above Switzerland and Germany does
not mean that SENAI is better, since it devotes enormous time and money to
prepare participants. These two European countries – as many others - do not
need to prove anything in this area, therefore, have a more casual attitude
towards this competition. Be that as it may, reaching the top is not only a matter
of training the chosen participants. One needs to have a long and excellent
tradition of skills development, with superb instructors, who are able to prepare
their students to world-class performance. This is what is implied by these
results.
Overall, skilled workers prepared by SENAI are as good or better than any in the
developing world and some can rank among the best anywhere. This is the result
of more than half a century of investment in quality training. Pride in
craftsmanship, as well as proper management of the institution are partly
responsible for that. And, perhaps surprisingly, the institution is resisting the
wear and tear of time.
Regional disparities. Brazil is a highly heterogeneous country. Therefore, one
should not expect the same quality of São Paulo and the Southern states to be
reproduced in the weakly industrialized states of the North and Northeast. And
indeed, they are not. However, the differences in quality are not as pronounced
as those observed in academic education. System S is able to prevent quality of
instruction from falling precipitously in these poorer regions. In fact, I never saw
a derelict school or levels of craftsmanship that are inadequate. To wit, thestatewidetrials that select participants for the World Skills Competition show a
distribution of winners that is surprisingly diverse in geography.
Training is separate from education. A very attractive feature of the system is the
fact that it is fully disconnected from formal education. Candidates to System S
courses have attendedacademic schools and stay there for as long as they want
or can. After they leave, they may decide to enrol in a System S course of study.
Given the play of supply and demand, more desirable and sophisticated
occupations attract students who stayed longer in academic schools. By the same
token, as the average schooling levels in the country increase, the students
postulating a vacancy tend to be better educated now than they were before.
System S is heterogeneous. Despite its overall success, a number of qualifications
are in order. SENAC, the sister institution for commerce does have world-class
programs, but overall, the level reached is not as high. SEBRAE is far more
creative and mercurial than SENAI, and this is its predicament, for good and for
evil.
Strengths and weaknesses come from the same source. Where are the main
shortcomings of the System S? The answer is that it lies in the same logic that
makes it effective: being owned and managed by employers. Serious and
effective employers’ associations, predictably, ensure a high quality training
system. Contrariwise, associations from more backward states can be somewhat
politicized, unstable and plagued with nepotism and other evils of public and
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semi-public bureaucracies. SENAI is powerless to resist the encroachment of
such bad associations. In other words, SENAI is as good as the employers of the
corresponding state.
One persistent feature of SENAI is administrative inertia. It does well, whatever
it tries to do. But changing directions is quite difficult. It is an inherently stable
institution, for good and for evil.
Be that as it may, overall, the bad apples are not that many and the vast majority
of entities in System S display, at least, a reasonable performance. The acid test,
of course, is the employability of the graduates. While the data are not totally
inclusive, enough tracer studies allow us to conclude that a very high proportion
of graduates get jobs commensurate with their training. Typically, from 60% to
90% do so.
Employers want to match supply and demand. SENAI is an employer’s
organization. Its logic is clear. Employers have all the reasons in the world to
make sure that it prepares the labour profile they need. Therefore, if they are
unhappy with the graduates produced, they can instantly fire the headmaster of
the school or even the General Director in the State. This does not happen often,
but the fact that it can happen works as a powerful deterrent against
complacency or inefficiency. Compared to all other system of training, anywhere
in the world, this is one of the most robustsolutions to prevent the usual
dysfunctionalities of training, namely, supply going in the wrong direction.
How to deal with low-status occupations?One problem that affects SENAI these
days – and has always been a problem - is the low status of some occupations,
particularly in less industrialized states. It is hard to attract, retain and direct to
the corresponding jobs in occupationslike furniture making or boiler making.The
situation is even worse in trades related to civil construction. SENAI has
displayed little imagination and boldness to counteract this old and well-known
problem.
Industrial R&D.One high point of SENAI, not present in its sisters’ institutions, is
the tradition of doing industrial R&D. An evaluation, about a decade ago, showed
a very significant number of projects being undertaken. And indeed, the results
are quite satisfactory. However, this evaluation also suggested that it does not do
as much R&D as it could.
Pre-service training or enrolling adult workers?At the beginning, SENAI was
conceived as an institution to train young workers. Progressively, it started
offering courses for working adults who needed upgrading their skills. In times
of slumbering growth, the share of employed participants increased, due to the
difficulty of placing youth in jobs. As a result of misdirected labour laws for
minors, apprenticeships and other instruction to this group has been
progressively shrinking.
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Therefore, SENAI is an institution that trains workers of any age. This is in
contrast to what happens in Europe, where institutions to train the youth are
different from others dedicated to upgrade workers or train the unemployed.
Acute labour scarcities in present times.With the acceleration of growth, in the
last decade, the demand for skilled labour of all varieties has increased. The
ability of System S to respond quickly to this sudden scarcity is limited by its
budget. Notice that countries such as Colombia and Costa Rica levy 2% of the
payroll, instead of one, as is the case with SENAI.
SENAC. SENAC has the same formal structure of SENAI. However, employers in
this loosely organized service sector are not very present or active vis a vis
SENAC, in order to make their needs explicit. Therefore, SENAC took a different
direction. Students pay for most of its courses, at least in part. Therefore, it
follows the logic of the market. It offers courses in whatever prospective
students are willing to pay. So, for all practical purposes, is a market-driven
organization. Therefore, it is self-regulating.
SENAI could also be considered as self-regulating, if we include the employers in
the equation. Decisions to offer this or that course, as a result of permanent
contacts with firms, instead of going through the market, reflect a direct
connection between supply (SENAI) and demand (firms).
The informal sector. With the exception of SEBRAE (small enterprises), System S
caters to the formal system and progressively climbs up to the most
sophisticated occupations. In fact, it has an ingrained and cultural preference for
moving uphill. In addition, like in many Latin American countries, employers are
not happy to have their levy contribution used to fund workers of the informal
sector - that does not pay taxes.
Considering that the informal sector employs close to half of the labour force,
responding to their needs is one of the most contentious issues with System S.
Many attempts have taken place with many different schemes. But not thatmuch
has happened. However, whenever additional government funds are offered, it
responds quickly and with quality programs, even though targeting may be
inadequate, due to the rules of most public programs of this nature.
The huge and invisible “non-system”
According to the government statistics, the total number of people trained by
System S and other less important programs is somewhat limited. As mentioned,
it reaches around xxx millions from the System S and not much else is tallied.
However, these statistics vastly underestimate the amount of training that takes
place and is not recorded, because it does not exist legally. The same with the
funds mobilized to generate much of this training.
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To fill the gap in knowledge, this author and an associate (Elenice Leite)
undertook a survey of other training alternatives offered in the country. We
called what we found the “invisible training system”, since it is not captured by
statistics and it is not the object of any public policies. In fact, it is totally ignored
by public bureaucracies.
We tried to tally what firms do to prepare their workers, what vendors offer as
training to those who purchase equipment and what consulting firms offer to
their clients. The numbers are not entirely adequate, but give orders of
magnitude. Of course, underestimations are unavoidable.
Preparation for tests giving access to public jobs or universities, English training
programs, computer instruction and many other possibilities were also included.
There are many proprietary programs offering training (English, for instance).
Firms train their workers. NGOs have philanthropic initiatives along these lines.
Finally, municipalities and other “generic” government bodies sponsor much
training.
To make a long story short, we found that this invisible training non-system
enrolled around forty million people per year (about ten years ago). This was
about the same as the total enrolment in academic schools in the same period. In
other words, the invisible system is as big as the visible one.
Our rough estimatesindicate costs between 4% and 5% of the GDP. This is an
extraordinary number. If official figures show around 5% of expenditures in
education, adding the invisible sector means that around 10% of GNP goes to
education and training, half of it unaccounted for.
Neither the Ministry of Labour nor MEC take notice of this monstrous effort. This
means that there are no policies to guide them. It is totally market driven. Supply
and demand is the name of the game. Nor are there certification, evaluation or
oversight.
Is this good or bad? Considering how much public bureaucracies pester school
operators and how ineffective are their efforts to control abuse, perhaps, it is
altogether a happy circumstance that nobody pays attention to this sector.
Interestingly, the press does not reveal scandals, abuse or other newsworthy
events – at the same time that much space goes to denounce scandals in the
regulated sectors of education.
Technical education and the Ministry of Education
We now turn to the academic side of training. Brazil has two modalities of
technical education, not unlike other countries. It has the secondary technical
schools and the “tecnólogos” that are two-year post secondary institutions.
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Both modalities are under the oversight of MEC, by contrast to vocational
training that is done mostly by System S and is the object of very little regulation.
Like in most Ministries of Education, there are some common denominators.
Regulations abound and the complexity or the rules and regulations baffle all
who approach this world.
As spelled out below, there is a drift towards diplomas and academic life.
Preparing modest students in not the ideal model for the staff of these public
technical schools. In addition, there is a discreet or open anti-private sector bias.
But considering the inability of the government to expand its own schools, living
with the private sector is inevitable.
Technical schools are recurrent solutions everywhere in the world. The idea is
simple: combine an academic degree with some professional training – or, at
least – an introduction to the world of work. However, this turnsout to be a very
unstable formula. Too much is expected of these schools. An academic degree
that prepares for higher education is added to the nuts and bolts of preparing for
an occupation. On top of that, schools are expected to offer the skills to leave
school and go to the market – or just to be a good citizen.
This menu gives indigestion. It is too heavy. Being a solution widely adopted, it is
no surprise that it tends to present problems everywhere. Being unstable, it can
warp in different directions. Too much emphasis on the vocational side and they
attract only underprepared students from low social extraction. It may then
become a dumping ground for weak students. Too much emphasis on academics
and they attract high performance students, trying to get a tuition-free education
of high quality. Professional preparation becomes meaningless.
The numbers. For a long time, the Brazilian government chose to create a high
quality and expensive network of technical schools. About one hundred of them
were in existence until a few years ago. Altogether, these schools enrolled xxx
students. All in all, this is a minute number, compared to cohorts at the
corresponding age. At each age, cohorts, rangefrom 2 to 3 million youth – as
demography changes. Several new units are now under construction but the
increase in enrolment is not expected to be dramatic, compared to the size of the
corresponding cohorts.
Technical schools and the Catch-22. These schools, for several decades, were
plagued with a “Catch 22” situation. The better they became, the larger the share
of graduates that went into the most competitive universities in the country,
instead of entering the corresponding labour market. Considering how expensive
these schools are, this is a clear waste of resources. In other words, the better
they became, the less they contributed to solve the problem of technical skills.
In the mid 90s, the Ministry of Education split these courses into two tracks. One
was the plain academic program. The other was the professional track, preparing
technicians. Candidates could take just the academic track, if all they wanted was
a good education, preparing for higher education tests. Only those truly
interested in getting a profession would want to enrol in the technical track. That
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allowed more modest students to find places in the technical track that was
crowded before by more affluent students who wanted only to get a good
academic education. This split prevailed until the new left-leaning government
was inaugurated in 2002. The federal schools again integrated the two tracks, for
a number of ideological and prestige reasons.
An interesting feature of this split is the possibility it opens for students to take
the technical track after graduating from secondary, instead of doing both at the
same time. This simplifies matters, as it allows potential candidates to postpone
their technical training for as many years as they want. It also lightens their
workload, a major concern for working students. About half of the students opt
for this alternative. In practice, this increases the average age of technical
education students.
Parallel to the federal network of schools, System S also created technical
schools. They are equally expensive but tend to be more specialized and closer to
the firms in the corresponding sectors. Their number is also quite limited, xx
units, and enrollingxxx students. From the mid 90s, they have adopted the
separate tracks for technical and academic and remained with this scheme, in
contrast to the reversal in federal schools.
From the point of view of policies and legal oversight, the System S technical
schools are treated by MEC like any other private schools. Surely, they must
follow the law and they must apply to obtain initial accreditation. But other than
that, education authorities do not have any direct power over them.
SENAI technical schools are one hundred per cent under the stewardship of the
employer’s associations – even though, in theory, the Ministry of Labour would
have something to say about them. Therefore, like the regular vocational
training, previously described, these schools are self-regulating or better said,
regulated by the employers who hire the graduates.
The large, highly industrialized and affluent state of São Paulo has its own
network of technical schools. These days, xxx of them are in operation. They cost
less and are less sophisticated than either SENAI or the federal schools. However,
tracer studies show a very high employability of its graduates.
A lot less conspicuous is the growth in the private sector – and often for-profit –
network of private schools. Actually, it has been displaying two-digit growth in
the last several years. Its total enrolment, at xxx, is already larger that that of all
the other public and semi-public modalities.
The quality of private sector schools, while not formally measured, seems to be
quite heterogeneous. By and large, schools cannot reach the quality levels of the
SENAI and Federal schools, if nothing else, because they enrol modest students
who must pay full cost. Also, the range of courses is narrower, focussing mostly
on computer, nursing aids, secretarial, business and other such generic courses.
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All these schools put together enrol xxx students. A very modest number,
compared to the around nine million students in academic tracks. In other
words, it is a very low enrolment, even though the situation is changing fast, due
to the precipitous growth in the proprietary network.
“Tecnologos”
Brazil being a latecomer in all modes of education, it is no surprise that two-year
post-secondary programs were also lagging, compared to other countries of
similar development. When getting a secondary diploma was a privilege, the
reasons for taking a short course, instead of a full university programs were not
convincing. In fact, returns to investment in higher education remain
astonishingly high.
Therefore, schools offering such degrees were slow to appear. However, with the
abrupt expansion in higher education, the beginning of market saturationfor
“generic” diplomas is setting in, giving more space for highly-focussed short
programs. Together with technical schools, these are the only sectors of
education growing at two digits. They presently correspond to 12% of higher
education enrolment, still a very low number, to be sure.
The federal schools that offer technical education also operate“tecnólogos”. The
same with System S where most schools offering technical education also offer a
two-year program.
It must be considered that the private sector “tecnólogos” are expanding very
fast, in a pattern similar to the technical schools. In most cases, new courses are
being openedby colleges already offering four-year bachelor programs.
Aggressive operators have seen a chance to grow faster in this greenfield.
To a very significant extent, this growth is a spin off from the overheated private
higher education sector - which already dominates 75% of enrolment in fouryear programs. This is a vibrant and highly energized sector, invaded in the last
decade by businessmen, bankers and foreign capital.
In the world of proprietary schools, the “técnico” and “tecnólogo” partnerships
in the same school are a lot less common than colleges adding a “tecnólogo” to
their offerings.
Strengths and weaknesses
Considering the private-public dichotomy, the situation with technical schools
and “tecnólogos” is quite similar.
Public technical schools are expensive but not market driven.Public schools are
expensive, very expensive indeed for the public coffers. Worse, the Constitution
does not permit student’s payment of tuition in public education.
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Most technical schools and “tecnólogos” have splendid campuses and first class
equipment. The same goes to the academic credentials of the faculty. Overall,
these are very serious and worthy institutions.
However, like in public universities, there are problems in governance.
Principals are not very accountable, either to society at large or to the MEC.
But perhaps the most serious problem results from the combination of
“academic drift” and certain aloofness towards the world of work. Increasingly,
the virus of academicism infects these schools. There is a strong pressure to hire
masters and doctors as faculty, while practical experience counts little in
evaluations. In the past two years, new legislation requires that principals of
technical and “tecnólogo” schools have Ph.Ds., a totally absurd rule, since that
almost ensures that the incumbent has no practical experience and, therefore,
does not know about the occupations being taught. In fact, one can say that this
is a most acute case of what, many years ago, Ronald Dore called “academic
drift”.
These schools want to become universities, with all the prestige that goes with it.
They dream of becoming tropical MITs.
The other problem with them is a chronic reluctance to get very close to the
enterprises. Capitalism is still a dirty word, at least among some of the more
politically engaged faculty.
Repeating, this is not to say that these schools are not socially useful. In fact, they
are. Graduates are well prepared to use their minds and well versed in all kinds
of technological culture. But they are not hands-on institutions.
On the positive side, the best of them do a lot of research. In some cases, contract
research with enterprises. At least the one I visited had a hotline for enterprises
to call and present their problems. If there is agreement in these initial
conversations, this may lead to a contract to retrofit a machine, to develop new
equipment or to troubleshoot problems in firms.
Private sector “tecnólogos”. Having to pay all expenditures out of what students
contribute with tuition, private schools cannot match the exploits of the Federal
or the SENAI schools. Nevertheless, they are growing and providing decent
services to the students. Clearly, they operate in less expensive areas, for
instance, in business, rather than in automation.
They tend to employ teachers with more practical experience. However, in
evaluations by MEC, points are gained by employing those with more diplomas,
even though they may completely lack experience.
One major difficulty faced by the private sector is the same for “tecnólogos” and
four-year colleges, namely, obtaining the initial authorization to open the
institution or to offer courses. There has been a long tradition of redtape and
Byzantine formal requirements to obtain the charter that allows the operation to
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start. This has been a battle for a long time. Eventually, permission is granted,
but the effort is considerable and it is not clear that following these formal rituals
helps much in terms of ensuring quality.
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