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More than half of Jamaica’s workforce needs to get certified in STEM disciplines to maintain global competitiveness, a local edutech entrepreneur has said.
STEM is short for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.
“It’s a big problem,” said Ricardo Allen, founder and CEO of One on One Educational Services Limited, during a presentation at the JSE Regional Investment & Capital Markets Conference in New Kingston.
With the ability to hire remote workers with STEM certifications from anywhere in the world, local companies might hire remotely, while limiting technology transfer, thus keeping the bulk of the population to low-skilled wages.
“We need to solve our STEM problem,” said Allen. “The global workforce is no longer restricted to one location. I can get that developer anywhere in the world.”
The latest unemployment rate stood at 3.5 percent as of October 2024, out of a 1.4 million workforce, Statin reported on Wednesday.
Allen noted that less than 40 per cent of the workforce is trained in the STEM fields, even though those fields are transforming the world.
“Math is important, yet the math pass rate across the Caribbean is under 40 per cent,” he said, adding that Jamaica needs to address the learning gap at the secondary and tertiary levels.
He also emphasised the necessity of improving teacher pay and retention to transform the workforce. “It is harder to be a teacher than a doctor in Germany and Singapore,” he said. “We have to be brave enough to make that change.”
Meanwhile, Neela Marquez, the CEO of Massy Remittances, highlighted that the pace of technology adoption in the Caribbean is limited by access to computers at the high school level and among the elderly.
“When we look at deploying mobile wallets, adoption starts from awareness and equipped youth with laptops and tablets,” said Marquez. “There is an element of fear today. How do we empower the older workforce to ensure they are not left behind?”
She added that the region’s human capital represents its greatest asset. The best talent, however, leaves the region for outside jobs.
Jamaican Oniel Cross, a partner with Deloitte in the United States who leads its cloud infrastructure business, said Deloitte’s investments in “black and brown” high schools have led students to pursue STEM subjects in university, who might not have otherwise followed that path.
The programme involves 40 kids age 15 to 17 years old, many of whom interacted with corporate USA for the first time. The results from the first year included “15 graduates in college studying computer science”, Cross said.
While he does not expect the programme participants to work for Deloitte, he believes they will remember that Deloitte gave them their start.
English (US) ·