According to DANE figures, academic dropout and unemployment exceeded 23% between the months of April and June, these are some of the aspects that must be taken into account to reflect on the tools in young people to choose a university career depending on the needs of companies in markets that are increasingly competitive.
The Saber Tests, known as ICFES, which were carried out at the beginning of September and motivate the645,000 grade 11 studentswith incentives such as scholarships, subsidies and housing granted by the government, arecognitive assessment tools, however, they are not the main tool to contribute to the financial and / or emotional future of this population that corresponds to 25% of the country’s inhabitants.
Samilé Albarracín, coach and director of Voca Festival, the first vocational event in LATAM to be held in October in Colombia, assures that theICFESis an evaluation that is applied to students during school andmeasures skills that have been developed thanks to repetition and continuous practices, that is, using neuronal plasticity as the main adaptation mechanism to survive the last years of secondary school. However, what is acquired in secondary education classrooms does not necessarily correlate with the talents or ingenuity that young people have.
This shows that, for this reason, choosing a career based on the results of the exam is running the risk of making mistakes, in addition to affecting the individual’s work and personal future.
“Based on the scores of the Saber 11 Test can have serious financial consequences, because although companies are constantly looking for talent capable of meeting the needs of the competitive market, these hires are based on two key arguments: a quality service or one of lower cost. Undoubtedly, good service in addition to technical, technological or professional knowledge must contain the vocational touch that is capable of providing outstanding solutions to the conflicts of the economy for which they are hired, “said Albarracín.
How to choose the career?
Taking into account that the day of knowing the results of the Saber 11 Test is approaching, experts recommend that young people and parents be calm with this, since as Albarracín assures, this is only a test and the best way to choose a university career as the backbone of life is through vocational guidance.
Benefits of choosing a vocation-based career
This brings a number of advantages in the finances and social sphere of young people.
When choosing a career based on talents, creativity and intuition are used naturally and eventually become an exchange for money.
Those who enjoy their vocation will always be chosen when buying a service, since they guarantee greater commitment and, surpassing the academic capacity of those who offer a service without connecting them with their innate abilities; They are only exercising their profession for money or pressure.
Why have vocational training?
Vocational training is important because it allows to find in each young person their talents, strengths and a series of aspects of each person that are found through scientific tests. The method consists of analyzing the evolution of the brain from childhood to youth to detect which of the talents or skills that a young person possesses are real and which are not. With the results obtained, it is possible to identify the area of greatest fluidity in the brain and thus connect adolescents with academic offerings that are potentially according to their faculties, natural thinking style and vision of life.
In Colombia of the more than 13,000 engineers who have graduated in the last 5 years, only 3,250 (25%) are women.
In terms of employment data, women studying engineering are 95% more likely to find a job in the first six months after graduating; than those who study undergraduate programs of another type, which have a current labor insertion that is between 43 and 60%.
By average salary, those who have just graduated from engineering have monthly salaries of approximately $ 2,800,000; while those who study other careers that are not STEM, can earn between $ 1,200,000 and $ 1,800,000 with a maximum of one year of experience.
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To develop the report, the Salesian University Foundation analyzed and crossed information from the National Information System of Higher Education (Snies), the Labor Observatory for Education (OLE) of the Ministry of Education, the Public Employment System (SPE) and the Colombian Society of Engineers (SCI), among other official sources.
Bogotá, October 2021. In Colombia, of the total number of students studying engineering, only 14% are women; Likewise, of the 13,000 professionals who in the last 10 years have received the title as engineers, only 25% belong to the female gender, as confirmed by a recent report by the Salesian University Foundation that analyzed and crossed information from the National Information System of Higher Education (Snies), the Labor Observatory for Education (OLE) of the Ministry of Education, the Public Employment System (SPE) and the Colombian Society of Engineers (SCI), among other sources.
Although the report clarifies in the last three years the gap between men and women studying STEM careers (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) has narrowed, the distance is still very wide. According to UNESCO, only 30% of women today choose this type of areas to study at university, showing that this gender still lags far behind in terms of representatives in STEM programs.
According to Camilo Navarro, dean of the Faculty of Engineering of the Salesian University Foundation, “at this moment women encounter several barriers that prevent them from participating in these disciplines, including prejudices and gender stereotypes that have great influence when choosing which profession to study,” she says.
Regarding the labor aspect, the report analyzed which are the professions that currently present better job opportunities and salaries for women, finding surprises between what they are studying compared to the opportunities offered by the market.
According to the Public Employment Service (SPE) and the Labour Observatory for Education (OLE), professions considered female offer lower levels of remuneration. “For example, a woman who finishes a Bachelor’s Degree in Biology has a 43% chance of getting a job the day she graduates, with an average salary of $1,200,000. In contrast, with one who studies Electrical Engineering who has a 95% chance of having a job on the day of graduation, with an average salary close to $ 2,800,000, “says Navarro.
Other data from the report that were studied directly from the Snies, confirm that, between 2015 and 2020, 87% of university students were registered in two groups of careers: those traditionally female, such as Psychology, Social Work, degrees in all areas, Psychopedagogy, Microbiology, Bacteriology and Nursing; and the non-traditionally female careers that have been ‘feminized’ during the last twenty years, such as Economic Sciences (Economics, International Business, Business Administration, Accounting), Law and Medicine.
Today, professional women’s job preferences center around marketing and finance. But sectors such as mining, extractive industries, public works, security, transport, logistics and technology are not part of their interests.
“This combination of educational and labor preferences has an important impact on the employability and salary level of women’s first job, since in many cases the sectors least preferred by them are those that actually offer them better salaries and employment opportunities,” adds Navarro.
These data add to the difficulty that the country has today to close the gap between the demand and supply of people to meet the advance of ICT and other technologies. “This gap has widened in recent years and it is estimated that, by 2025, we will have a deficit of 42,000 engineers,” he says.
To take into account, according to the Ministry of Information and Communications Technologies (MinTic), women who enter the digital segment in the labor market have more competitive salaries than in other industries. For example, those with an average of five years of experience receive a monthly financial compensation of more than $6 million.
Engineering has timidly captivated the interest of women
According to the OLE, from 2010 to 2019 (most recent official information), by basic core of knowledge, administrative engineering had more women graduates than men, with 2,281 graduates compared to 1,466 men; The same was presented in Industrial Engineering, with 3,106 against 1,682; environmental engineering, 16,030 versus 9,889; biomedical engineering, 1,491 against 1,320; and chemical engineering, 6,169 versus 4,674.
In contrast, when analyzing the 2019 data, the largest gender gap by engineering, in terms of number of graduates, was presented in civil engineering, since in these 1,822 men graduated against 850 women; systems and computer engineering, 5,102 versus 1,375; electronic and telecommunications engineering, 1,760 against 307; electrical engineering, 1,026 versus 102; and mechanical engineering, 3,833 against 506;
By percentage, the engineering companies with the greatest gender inequality per graduate are: electrical engineering, 90.06%; mechanical engineering, 86.8%; and electronic and telecommunications engineering, 82.57%. It is followed by systems engineering and computer science, 73.05%; and civil engineering, 53.35%.
“This phenomenon is due to some failures that remain in the culture, where women are induced to be calm, vain and to dedicate themselves to care tasks, which are less valued by society, while men must be strong, competitive and perform in more technical professions and in positions of power, which are the careers most valued by society. An example of this are the marked stereotypes in toys, as video games and technology are usually related from an early age to the male gender. Another scenario is related to the work of construction management, in which comments that consider women as incapable of making decisions and performing tasks with the same effectiveness as a man are still common, “says Germán Pardo, president of the Colombian Society of Engineers.
As for the engineering companies with the highest female participation, by number of graduates between 2010 and 2019, the following stand out: environmental engineering, 61.69%; and industrial engineering, 54.15%.
“Although there is an advance in the acceptance of the capacities and skills of women in Engineering, it is still necessary to strengthen the values in the family, society and academia that allow them to decide to advance their professional studies in this branch, and develop and carry out tasks related to Engineering with the same ease and confidence that men enjoy”, Pardo added.
The panorama in the country’s universities is worrying
In the Andes it was found that the total population of engineering students in the last 10 years has remained around 5,000 people, of these only 33% are women. By type of engineering, the program with the most women is environmental engineering (66% more women than men), biomedical engineering (53%) and chemical engineering (51%).
Regarding the Javeriana, there are currently 2,783 students in its different engineering careers, of these 1,922 (69.06%) are men and only 861 (30.94%) are women. It is interesting that in none of its seven active programs in this academic area are women more than men.
With regard to the District University, a total of 5,194 students are part of the Faculty of Engineering. Of these, 1,287 are women, 3,907 are men. It is also a matter of concern that in none of its engineering programs are female students more than men.
And in the Colombian School of Engineering, the total number of engineering students amounts to 4,230, of these only 1,367 (32%) are women. On the other hand, civil engineering, with 439 female students (32%) and industrial engineering, 376 students (28%), are the programs that have the highest proportion of female students today.
The results of this report set off the alarms of the academy, since it is worth remembering the importance of women for the development of science and technology in the country; and put gender equality and its empowerment in society between that.
Likewise, these data outline an opportunity that allows universities to impact more women with their engineering programs, generate better attraction strategies and develop plans within institutions to overcome the gender gap that still persists in this professional area.
A report by the Salesian University Foundation, which analyzed and crossed data from the Public Employment System (SPE), the National Information System of Higher Education (Snies), the Labor Observatory for Education (OLE) and the National Administrative Department of Statistics (Dane), among other sources such as the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, indicated that there are currently 630 vacancies for agro-industrial engineers, of which only 30% are being covered due to the lack of specialized human resources.
According to the analysis, at the moment there are about 300 students who, only in Bogotá, are being trained as agroindustrial engineers (Snies); The number of graduates in this career, between 2019 and 2020 in the capital of the country, did not exceed 60 professionals; and its Labor hook salary is between $ 2’100,000 and $ 2’300,000, not to mention that their labor linkage rate is 77%, which indicates that between 7 and 8 out of 10 agroindustrial engineers get a job in less than 6 months after they graduated (OLE).
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Similarly, according to information from the DANE, agriculture is the second activity that contributes in greater numbers to the occupation of labor in the country, represented in more than 3 million people who work in this sector.
Given this panorama, agro-industrial engineers have a historic opportunity and are emerging as one of the most relevant professionals with the best growth expectations.
It depends, for example, on their work to guarantee the supply of food to all the inhabitants of the country in the post-pandemic; Likewise, they are able to contribute one of the main debates of the moment, such as the reflection on food imports; And finally, they are fundamental to close the historical gap of needs that has not allowed the countryside to have the same level of development as cities.
“For these and other reasons, Argo industrial Engineering is called to lead the new developments of agriculture, supported by the possibilities that exist to potentiate the various productive and economic activities offered by the Colombian countryside”, says Camilo Navarro, dean of the Faculty of Engineering of the Salesian University Foundation.
The lifeline of academia to ensure food safety
Although the country has maintained an agricultural tradition for several centuries, the difficulty of competing with productions subsidized by other nations, added to recent developments and approaches in other areas of the national economy, has made Colombia an importer of its own food. This trend will have to be reconsidered in the years to come, with the decisive participation of agro-industrial engineers.
“The post-pandemic is going to have a significant effect on food production and processing. At this moment the country imports more than 10 million tons of grains annually and, with the mobility restrictions that were recently presented by the national strike, we will have to strengthen our raw materials and local production, “says Navarro.
The variety of climates, lands and biodiversity with which Colombia is also a factor that plays in favor of the purpose of revitalizing the countryside and its multiple possibilities, an objective towards which the National Government must necessarily look, considering the moment that the world is going through and the great lag that, in terms of economic and social growth, it presents the rural sector versus the urban sector.
In this sense, it is important to highlight some figures such as those cited by Jens Mesa, executive president of Fedepalma, in the prologue to the book “Agro and Agribusiness in Colombia”, according to which the nation has an agricultural frontier of more than 40 million hectares of which only 7.1 million (that is, 17.75%) are cultivated.
The goal, concludes the report of the Salesian University Foundation, is to train more agro-industrial engineers who can, not only overcome the gap that currently exists in this career and that could jeopardize the country’s food security in the short or medium term, but it is also necessary to train more professionals who are able to solve the paradox that indicates that the field, Despite being the greatest repository of future hopes in terms of food supply, today it continues to be impoverished due to the historical debt that several generations of Colombians maintain with the rural sector.
