In last week’s Caribbean Business Rafael Hernandez Colon, three-term former Governor of Puerto Rico, restated the obvious by emphasizing the need for Puerto Rico to mobilize itself and put in place promptly a plan to attack the genetics, digital, and knowledge revolution. I do agree with him; to address this opportunity will require a change in our system of higher education. The only problem is I have not heard nor seen any such plan to dramatically impact Puerto Rico’s higher education system.
Governments are like businesses. Many of the same methods are equally effective in each of these environments. Puerto Rico faces declining revenues, increasing costs, and ineffective leadership. If this were a business, the actions required are clear. Develop new revenue streams, or maximize those you have by trimming costs, and find new leadership Although the Pridco reduction seems promising, I doubt the entire Government could follow suit. There are just too many powerful constituencies. There is a potential solution, however, social entrepreneurs. When there is too much bureaucracy and the resistance too powerful, then social entrepreneurs can leverage agility and freedom to address critical issues.
We need a plan to quickly empower Puerto Rico’s higher educational system, but the Government nor the United States holds the answer. The only possible path to a plan and a solution lies within the entrepreneurial community. For me, what we desperately need are businesses that wire, educate, and instill Puerto Rico.
First we need low cost broadband available for all of the major cities of Puerto Rico. However, what needs to be clear is this is not an investment to get rich quick, but a rising tide floats all boats scenario where the long range is emphasized.
Second, the only way to create a knowledge industry is to produce knowledge workers. We need massive quantities of highly educated, computer savvy graduates. We need a new workforce which is as comfortable with a keyboard and compiler as they are with a cellular phone.
Finally, we need to instill into this new workforce, the entrepreneurial spirit. They need to be able to see for themselves that we need a new path. They need to feel it in their bones, that the old path only leads into a dead-end. They need to be able to look past the lackadaisical acceptance that our current system is not broken and see opportunity.
Plainly, there is no other way. This is the only option available to us. Becuase if we don’t found businesses to address these problems, we hasten our arrival at the end of our current path. Only suffering lies at the end of that path.
