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MEXICO: Nation’s Future Hinges on Near-Empty Science Classrooms

MEXICO CITY, May 9 2009 (IPS) - Many solutions for sustainable development in Mexico lie in the scientific and technological training of its younger generations, say academics. But students in this country, where everyone wants to be a doctor or accountant, are ignoring those fields.

Until recently, Armando Guadarrama attended a class with just 15 students, but now “we joined with another group because we were so few, and now there are about 30 of us,” he says.

Guadarrama is in his eighth semester of petrochemical engineering at the National Polytechnic Institute (IPN) in Mexico City, and is enthusiastic about his future profession: “I would like to conduct research to improve refining processes in order to reduce air pollution.”

Although oil accounts for 10 percent of GDP in Mexico, it is the focus of many academic fields – mostly science and technology – that are largely ignored by young people in Mexico.

The other side of the story is the traditional fields, where students have filled university classrooms for decades: medicine, accounting, law, tourism, design, psychology, business administration, communications, architecture and dentistry.

With graphs in hand, David Jaramillo, IPN’s director of higher education, explains “this year 28 students competed for each of our openings in medicine.” In comparison, for each spot in petrochemical engineering, fewer than five competed.

Antonio Aguilar is information coordinator for another of the country’s leading universities, the Autonomous Metropolitan University (UAM). There, the 10 most popular fields of study account for 52 percent of student demand.

“It’s sad, because we offer 79 areas of study. In other words, the other 69 fight for the remaining 48 percent of students,” he says.

There’s a reason for the half-deserted classrooms: “When I go to chat with aspiring students, I conduct an exercise. I ask them to name 10 fields of study, but they have a hard time even coming up with eight. There is total ignorance,” he said.

Guadarrama says vocational guidance had nothing to do with his choice of career. “I have an uncle that works in this, that’s why I knew about it,” he explains.

His is not an isolated case. When officials from the three federal universities in the Mexican capital discuss the issue, “the surprise is that we are all in the same boat: science and technology are drawing few students,” says Aguilar.

And this situation reflects what is happening in Mexico at large, where just 0.4 percent of GDP is invested in science and technology, he adds.

It is strange, for example, that in “a country bordered by the Pacific Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico, with their great marine wealth, nobody wants to study marine biology,” says Aguilar.

“We have the most intense tides in the world, the northern hemisphere’s most important solar radiation zones, and we are full of petroleum – that is now running out – so it’s a shame that energy engineering is not a high-demand field.”

And in a country “where the south is drowning because the rivers flood, while in the north we are dying of thirst, nobody wants to study hydrologic engineering,” he adds.

Mexico needs more technicians, researchers and scientists in order to confront such pressing problems as global climate change.

“Climate change is creating areas of desertification, there are problems of rural productivity, and there are not enough professionals to come up with solutions,” says Roberto Rodríguez, an official at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM).

Jaramillo points out that Mexico is one of the “leading producers of silver, kaolinite, bauxite, cement and glass, but there is no value added to these materials.” At the same time, “all earth sciences, like geology, mining, metallurgy, have problems drawing enough students,” he says.

And without experts in math and physics – other neglected fields – “we will always have dependent technologies,” says Rodríguez, a member of the Mexican Academy of Sciences.

In astronomy, Mexico has made “contributions to the map of the universe and of black holes, which are up to the level of research in the rest of the world. And having astronomers comes from having physics as a field of study,” he notes.

There have also been significant Mexican contributions “to knowledge about coastal zones and farming, and exploitation of mangroves,” thanks to oceanography, he adds.

This is why the universities cannot shut down less popular departments, even if it is an effort to attract the minimum number of students to offer the courses.

These fields “offer employment, professional development, niche opportunities. In other countries they are exploding, but in this country of 106 million people, we barely have 15 young people who want to study them,” adds Rodríguez.

Guadarrama has high hopes. “If you go to the Pemex (Mexico’s state-run oil company) web site, you’re going to see that an engineering internship is paying about 20,000 pesos (1,400 dollars), and that’s for students who haven’t yet completed their degree,” he says.

Itzel Condado is in the second semester of chemistry at UNAM and believes most of her peers reject her chosen field because “they think they are going to earn more money in other areas, or there won’t be any jobs,” even though “there is a lot of research in ‘green’ chemistry, processes that help fight pollution,” she says.

Meanwhile, at the other extreme, the traditional areas of study at Mexican universities are seeing record numbers of applicants.

In March, UNAM rector José Narro reported for this year “the highest demand” in the university’s history: 114,000 young people took the admission exam, and just eight percent were admitted.

University officials explain that the higher education system only has space for 26 of every 100 Mexicans of university age.

In addition, Mexico is experiencing a “demographic dividend” – a favourable ratio between the population of dependent age and the population of working age. Historically, the country has had a higher percentage of children, but because of family planning policies in the 1970s, now there are more young adults – a situation that is expected to remain constant until 2025.

According to the United Nations, Mexico has 16 working age adults for every 10 children or elderly adults. But the benefits of this demographic dividend, warns the U.N., are not automatic. To make the most of it, young people must be educated in order to develop a more highly qualified labour force.

In Aguilar’s opinion, the key to filling science and technology classrooms is “state intervention.”

Scholarship programmes are successful in keeping young people studying and at the same time “giving preference to those seeking technological and scientific careers,” he says.

Condado is one example. She has continued her studies thanks to a scholarship from the Mexican Academy of Sciences, after she won the National Chemistry Olympics.

But in her class she is one of the few students truly interested in this science, she says. “There are 50 students, but many of my classmates are just there because they couldn’t get into medicine, and they’re the ones who will drop out. In the end just 20 per class graduate.”

Condado believes there needs to be more information about laboratory research projects and how they are applicable to everyday life. That would give pause to students who originally chose medicine “because they wanted to save lives.”

“You can save more lives in chemistry than in medicine,” she maintains, and is ready with an example: “A professor told us that if someone could find a way to convert carbon dioxide into acetic acid (vinegar), we’d solve the problem of global warming.”

*This story is part of a series of features on sustainable development by IPS – Inter Press Service and IFEJ – International Federation of Environmental Journalists, for the Alliance of Communicators for Sustainable Development (www.complusalliance.org).