The Growing Disconnect Between the Labor Market and Higher Education in Mexico

By Gabriel Sanchez Zinny. In Latin America, there is growing evidence of a major disconnect between the skills being taught in our classrooms and the demands of the labor market. On the one hand, youth aged 18 to 24 are facing extremely high unemployment rates -- but at the same time, large numbers of positions go unfulfilled due to the lack of qualified applicants. This fundamental paradox is the focus of a recent paper by Ernesto Garcia of the Mexican think tank Center for Research on Development (CIDAC), which asks: "What are companies looking for -- and not finding -- in young professionals?"
Garcia's statistics show that private firms primarily reject candidates for lack of knowledge or skills (over 70 percent) rather than a lack of experience (just over two percent) or an incompatible personality (about 25 percent). More...