in Mexican universities. The net result is that more than 60,000 graduates are from technical
schools and IT university programs annually. There has been an eightfold increase in enrollment
for courses related to IT in the past 15 years. As a result, Mexico has the largest number of IT
graduates in Latin America” (Gartner, 2007. ID number: G00153167).
However, the formal education system is not flexible enough to respond to the rapid changes in demand for specialized
skills brought on by technological innovation. Private-sector training and vendor certificates are generally considered a
relatively flexible means of supplying ICT skills
(OECD Information Technology Outlook, 2006). This is true for
many categories of workers, but is generally thought to be more important for older workers, whose skills acquired
through the educational system are likely to be substantially depreciated, and for the less skilled and less educated
(Bassanini et al., 2005). The Mexican government is in the process of implementing updated curricula for IT-related
programs that will make them more practical. An example of this is the Mexican government’s Program for the
Development of the Software Industry (PROSOFT) that aims to increase the country’s spending on IT to 4.3% of its
GDP and to reach a production level of $5 billion making Mexico a leader in software development and related services
in Latin America (Datamonitor, 2008). The government has also established numerous technological parks, to provide
an impetus to develop technology in the country. However, considerable work remains to be done to improve
educational performance and English-language skills among all levels of the population. There is a clear imperative for
the government to craft policies that support education systems and education reform that are aligned to the ever-
changing need of the IT service industry.
Mexico’s supply of IT Skills
Mexico is perceived as providing commodity IT skills, like application coding and call-center support, however market
expectations are changing to non-commodity high end IT skills. The Mexico’s only option is to evolve to higher
technical and quality skills; otherwise Mexico will be less competitive in terms of IT service labor compared with India,
China and other Latin American countries, like Brazil, where the wages for IT skills are lower and with very well
developed country brand recognition (Gartner, 2008). Additional time and effort on education, training and R & D will
be needed in Mexico to extract all the potential from the new ICT technologies; based on two major trends according to
Gartner Group in its fifth Hype Cycle for Higher Education 2008:
6
IT certification can have a wider importance. According to independent research commissioned by Microsoft, human
resource managers that consider IT certificates to be important both for IT and non-IT roles, would choose candidates
with IT certification over those without, and would be willing to pay an average of 6.9% additional salary for these
certified skills (Microsoft Corporation, “Delivering 21st century skills for employability”).
Convention