Tilt: Since 2003, Microsoft has annually organized an international student competition, the Imagine Cup. Brazil is a power. Is it a way of trying to attract more young people to the area, which suffers from a shortage of professionals?
Tania Cosentino: The Imagine Cup can help because when you bring awareness of what you can do with technology to a group of students not necessarily in the technology field, it can awaken them to come to this job market. But, to specifically address this pain that we have today, the lack of professionals, we have a series of professional qualification programs and partnerships with educational institutions.
Tilt: Why is it such a pain? How does this lack of professionals affect Microsoft?
TC: We train 57,000 professionals a year, and the market demands 159,000. There is a lack of 102,000 professionals every year, and this gap is accumulating. And with each passing year, there are fewer young people interested in this exact world. In Brazil, it’s worse. We see a China, a Korea, with a much higher proportion of exact science professionals. And that will delay Brazil’s economic development.
Tilt: What is the source of this problem?
TC: When you look at the history of our young people at school and see the results of Pisa [Programa Internacional de Avaliação de Estudantes, da Organização para a Cooperação e Desenvolvimento Econômico, a OCDE], you already start to have an answer. Just look at our Pisa math score, which is extremely low. A person who struggles to solve basic math problems does not set himself up in an engineering profession.
Tilt: How to solve?
TC: As a fundamental pillar, we have to address our problem of basic education, so that our students have better chances in the job market. The second point is to promote science from an early age. I loved math, I participated in the Olympics, but most students are afraid. For girls, it’s even worse, because we’re not even stimulated. The current generation’s are a little more, but in mine, I was zero stimulated. In other words: half of the Brazilian population, we do not even encourage the area of exact sciences.
