Dan Berthiaume
Anyone with children knows how critical a good education is. Education makes the difference between pursuing a lucrative, fulfilling career and simply working at a dead-end job to pay the bills. For nearshore outsourcing, which is still in the early stages of maturity as a widespread business practice, education will be just as critical in determining whether it goes on to become an 
alternative means of executing call center services and other low-level functions, or reaches its full potential as a first choice for performing high-level business processes and IT development and management activities.
During a Q&A session at last week’s Nearshore Nexus conference in New York City, Alavaro Aribe, former president of the Republic of Colombia, stressed the importance of education to the continued growth of outsourcing success both in Colombia and in the greater Latin American region. “Twenty-five years ago, economists recommended Latin American countries needed to change from commodity-based economies to knowledge-based economies,” said Uribe. “They need the same thing today.”
Uribe credited Chile, which had 100,000 university students 20 years ago and has 1.1 million university students today, as an example of positive educational change in Latin America. He also cited efforts by Colombia to make college education free for its poorest citizens and a “progressive self-service” model for middle-class residents. However, Uribe stressed the importance for all countries in the region to become “much more cooperative” in providing higher education to as many residents as possible, with the development of a stable and replenishable nearshore outsourcing workforce as one of the primary goals.
Uribe’s vision for Latin American governments to do more to help develop a knowledge base for the burgeoning nearshore outsourcing industry is laudable; and governments such as those of Chile and Colombia which have already taken steps in this direction deserve recognition. In addition, nearshore countries ranging from the Dominican Republic to Costa Rica have launched programs where private industry and universities partner with the government to help produce citizens with the English proficiency and technical skills necessary to develop a thriving nearshore infrastructure.
However, considering that all this effort ultimately benefits US businesses and helps reduce their operating costs to free up money to invest in growth and innovation, it is unfair to expect nearshore countries to carry the entire burden. US businesses which rely on nearshore outsourcing, or are evaluating nearshore outsourcing, should start taking a more active role in helping develop the technology infrastructure and skills the nearshore region needs to meet its full potential as a destination for high-level BPO and ITO.
Examples of US businesses making this type of effort already exist. Dell and HP have donated more than 40,000 PCs to a government-run program for schoolchildren in Trinidad, and many large US firms operate corporate campuses in Latin American countries where their nearshore talent can receive training.
But this effort needs to broaden in scope. Imagine if major US firms made direct investments into the higher educational systems and IT infrastructures of nearshore countries to elevate their overall capability to provide higher-level BPO and ITO services. Donating computers is a great start, but there is far more which can be done. This includes establishing scholarships, endowing university professorships and departments, and assisting the development of actual national telecommunications infrastructures, rather than simply providing free PCs which may still link to inferior internet connections.
Obviously, nearshore governments would have to make such investments worthwhile through special tax advantages and other benefits, but ideally they would be made with an eye toward improving the overall technical competency of a country, rather than aimed at developing specific skills and employees for a company’s own outsourcing needs. In time, this would help produce generally sophisticated human and technical resources that would benefit all partners in the nearshore outsourcing environment. The easiest people to help are those who help themselves, and nearshore countries are proving they are ready for a hand up, not a handout.
