Engineering Education, Innovation and Economic Development: Why Engineering for the Americas Matters?

technology education is based on the fact that current and future demands will be for the solution of problems involving human values, attitudes, and behavior, as well as the inter-relationships and dynamics of social, political, environmental, and economic systems on a global basis. The sophistication with which companies compete is strongly influenced by the quality of the local business environment. Companies cannot employ advanced production techniques without a high quality well trained workforce and high quality infrastructure. Poor countries lack well-developed firms; they compete in the world market with cheap labor and natural resources. To move beyond this stage, the development of well-functioning human resources is essential. A well-educated workforce can help any country, any company in any industry compete in the most sophisticated ways, using the most advanced, relevant skills and technologies. The Engineering for the Americas initiative intends to establish a mechanism that allows the creation of educational reforms at the regional level that include the needs of the productive sector and prepare new engineers with attributes certified by transparent accreditation systems, which will further professional mobility, investment, and therefore economic development. This paper briefly examines the ways in which engineering and technology education can play a central issue in economic development and how these themes can impact in Latin American and Caribbean countries. The central issue of this paper is the argument that development will increasingly depend on a country’s ability to understand, interpret, adapt, select, produce and use scientific and technological knowledge in appropriate ways for countries development