According to data from the Chamber of Information and Communication Technology Companies (Camtic), Costa Rica has a shortage of 7% of professionals in the areas of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM, for its acronym in English). . In other words, there is a shortage of talent of some 5,000 professionals, which makes this union of specialists listed professionals and with ample possibilities of employability in the current market.
In 2020, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) warned that in the country only 15% of university graduates corresponded to STEM careers, which shows a stagnation in statistics since 2005. In 2018, around of 12,961 jobs related to STEM and right at the end of 2022 more than 35,000 new jobs were projected, as revealed by the Costa Rican Coalition of Development Initiatives (Cinde).
In this sense, Luis Carlotti, General Manager of Cisco for Central America and the Caribbean, considers that public-private partnerships are the best resource for the promotion of STEM models in Costa Rica, in order to promote inclusion policies, at the same time that respond to the demand for the jobs of the future. To this end, Cisco has promoted the Networking Academy initiative in the company of more than 150 educational partners in the country, such as Technical Colleges, Universities, NGOs, and Community Centers, managing to train more than 100,000 Costa Ricans, of whom 22,000 are women.
Through this type of STEM training strategies, the country can promote scientific-technological knowledge in the population, in order to strengthen the supply of qualified labor available to the local and global market.
