Engineering: issues, challenges and opportunities for development ...

ENGINEERING AROUND THE WORLDAs the main agent of physical transformation, technologicalcreation and productive innovation, engineering has a centralrole in social and economic development. However, as in manycountries, this is is often not well understood by policy-makers.This is partly due to rising apathy towards politics, howevera new generation of engineers is working to overcomethis limitation to cooperate in national development planningand in projects with foreign financing. The main engineeringchallenges discussed in Argentina are:■ Improving transport infrastructure, its operation, the modesof transport used and safety.■energy Urgently increasing the supply.■Expansion of urban sanitation.■ Better distribution of activities and population to reduceinequality and transform informal settlements.■ Promotion of engineering enrolment, graduation and training.Argentina has more than eighty institutions that educateand graduate engineers. Of these, seventy are public collegesor national universities (including twenty-four regionalschools of the National Technological University) with freeinscription for secondary school graduates, and the othersare private and paid for by the students. Together they offer395 grade courses, of which 376 grant twenty-one specializeddegrees that are selected in a process of curriculumunification being conducted by the Federal Council of EngineeringDeans (CONFEDI). 102 Courses are completed in fiveyears but statistics show that only 9.6 per cent of studentscomply fully. The dropout rates from these studies is alsovery high. The total numbers of graduate engineers in theperiod 1998–2003 was 11,460 from national universities,10,250 from the National Technological University and 4,090from private universities. The main engineering fields werecomputer sciences and industrial, electronic, civil, chemicaland mechanical engineering. It is estimated that, at present,women make up nearly 20 per cent of all engineering students.There are also many courses for postgraduate study,which are increasingly in demand.Quality control of engineering courses is part of a system ofaccreditation defined by the Argentine National Law of HigherEducation. The National Council of Evaluation and Accreditation(CONEAU) 103 plans evaluations and grants programmeslicenses for three or six years. Accreditation guidelines and102 Federal Council of Engineering Deans (CONFEDI). Go to: http://www.confedi.org.ar103 National Council on Evaluation and Accreditation, Argentina. Go to: http://www.coneau.gov.arprocedures are similar to those of ABET, the WashingtonAccord and the EMF. To improve the usefulness of the system,some engineering institutions consider that the evaluationsshould include the opinion of practicing engineers working inprofessional activities and productive sectors.CONFEDI is analyzing, in cooperation with the Secretary ofUniversity Policies of the Ministry of Education, curricula andpedagogy 104 with a view to updating engineering educationto deliver the outcomes and competences needed for 2015.Some guiding concepts for this process include: better contextualizationso that engineers can meet the needs of thecountry; more attractive training that increases formative,creative and practical activities; closer relations with regionalpopulation, production and problems; and the considerationof social situations. Many of these concepts were postulatedby UNESCO in the Delors Report105 in 1996, with inspirationfor engineering education such as ‘learning to know, learningto do, learning to live together and learning to be’ as the fourpillars of education throughout life.In the last decades of the twentieth century, Argentinasuffered a costly ‘ brain drain’ of engineers. With economicrecovery, demand is still not being satisfied by the number ofnew graduates. Enrolment in engineering programmes beganto decline in 1990 and reached its lowest level between 1996and 1999. Economic recovery began in 2000 with policiesencouraging local production; with the result that enrolmentincreased 11 per cent between 2000 and 2007. There weresome 30,000 enrolments of engineering students in 2005, butthat same year fewer than 5,000 engineers graduated, showingthat many left at intermediate level.For this reason, the national government is encouragingengineering students to enrol and complete their studieswith scholarships and funds in order to improve engineeringschools. There are funds to promote the return of highlyqualified Argentine engineers who have left the country. TheOffice of Science, Technology and Productive Innovation ofthe national government was upgraded to a new ministry lastyear, and it leads promotional programmes to expand andenhance engineering education and research, and their linkswith production. The national government annual budget forengineering was estimated to be just less than US$700 millionin 2008, after it was increased at a rate of 16 per cent per yearbetween 2000 and 2008. We must also add to this amount thecontributions of private schools and productive enterprise toeducate and train engineers.104 Secretary of University Policies, Ministry of Education. Go to: http://www.me.gov.ar/spu/105 Jacques Delors. 1996. Learning: the Treasure Within. Report to UNESCO of the InternationalCommission on Education for the Twenty-first Century. UNESCO publishing,Paris.243