Libro Blanco Vol I en Ingles

TOWARDS A NATIONAL INNOVATION STRATEGY FOR COMPETITIVENESSVOLUME 1itself. [See Figure 3]Furthermore, if the experience of countries that have made significant leaps in their growth rates in thelast 30 years is analyzed, it is clear that the rate at which our schooling has increased is low in relation to thosenations. For example, South Korea, in a period of 30 years, went from an average of 6.6 to 10.8 years ofeducation of the population, with an average growth rate of nearly 11% in the level of schooling. Additionally,South Korea had a per capita income below Chile in 1975, while in the year 2000 it surpassed Chile by 50%. Infact, in the 1975-2000 period, the per capita income of Chile grew at an average rate of 20% every 5 years whileSouth Korea did so at a rate of 36%.The picture is quite similar in third level education, which is one of the key aspects for thecompetitiveness of a country. First, the corresponding enrolment levels (43%) fall well below the rates for thebenchmark countries (which even reach 80%) [See Figure 4]. Moreover, between 1991 and 2004, the rate ofincrease of enrolment in third level education, while far above the historical rate, was still considerably belowthe rates of that same group [See Figure 5].The fact that the rates in which both schooling and per capita income have grown in those countriesexceeds ours is a clear sign that if we do not increase the speed at which we are creating human capital, we willcontinue to systematically lag behind, thus losing our competitiveness in the world. As such, Chile should setitself the challenge of speeding up its progress and eliminating these lags between now and the year 2020, inorder to reach a third level education enrolment rate approaching 80% by then, a level comparable to that ofcountries like South Korea, Lithuania and Latvia today.Low quality: the performance of Chile in international tests that measure knowledge and abilities inmathematics, science and reading comprehension is well below that of most of the countries that take part inthese evaluations, revealing a relatively poor performance: countries with a similar per capita income to Chile,such as Latvia and Malaysia, obtain far higher results. The data from Figure 6 show that Chile is placed far belowthe trend curve in all the tests analyzed and that, given our level of development, the result in all tests shouldbe at least 30% higher.The above is nothing new. Various international institutions such as the OECD, the World Bank, theInternational Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Economic Forum have emphasized the importance of improvingthe human capital of Chile to attain greater rates of long-run growth. Improving the quality of education is anurgent challenge, since it is the only way for Chile to reduce the lags that separate it from its competitors aswell as its goal of taking the definitive leap to development.34