Government Obstruction of Education

From Juan Andres Suarez Rodriguez come these interesting observations:

“I have some experience working in African countries, where the educational systems are public and awful. To put a simple example, two of my local colleagues now who will end university next year do not know how to convert meters in centimeters.

“Well, in several locations the companies I have worked for tried to develop programs to improve the education of the students in the area we would be receiving in the future. Until now it has been impossible; the regulations do not permit it and always, at the end, the governments sit with us only to see how much money we will give them, but they do not give away any control or accept any change in their ‘fabulous’ system.

“In the country I am now foreigners can represent at maximum10% of the human resources of the company by law. So for every new engineer you want to hire from abroad you have to employ 9 locals, no matter if you need them or not (usually not). Add minimum wages plus the unions ‘defending’ workers ‘rights’ to work as little as they can and you do not need anything else (and there is plenty) to see why development is so far away.

“The real funny thing about all this is that in the last 30 years the USA and Europe have fallen into this, in spite of supposedly trying the opposite (bringing undeveloped countries to our capitalistic way). I guess that foreign aid really is a royalties payment, so Africa and Argentina should demand much more money for their leading role.”

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7:37 am on July 12, 2012