It was reporter Isabela Moya who warned: in 2014, there were 469 thousand freshmen who entered engineering courses and in 2023, only 358 thousand, a drop of 23%. To give you an idea of what these numbers mean, in 2023 there were 6.7 million young people taking engineering courses.
This indicator signals a country that is going backwards. In 1950, when Brigadier Casimiro Montenegro created the Aeronautical Technological Institute, Brazil was moving forward. Communist China was cycling and its GDP had shrunk to a third of what it had been a century earlier. China went backwards, until Deng Xiaoping woke it up and what happened.
During the difficult years of the 1980s, engineer Odil Garcez Filho lost his job and decided to open a snack bar on Avenida Paulista. His diploma was displayed next to the cashier and the snack bar was called “The Engineer Who Turned into Juice”.
The drop in the number of freshmen in 2023 indicates that in the 21st century it is engineering that is turning into juice, and it cannot be said that it is the government’s fault. In 2024. Classes for the first groups of 25 students will begin this year, with renewable energy and computing systems courses, on the São José do Campos (SP) campus.
In 2026, ITA will begin operating in Fortaleza, with laboratories and accommodation. The courses are free and students receive housing, food and clean clothes.
The drop in the number of freshmen means that interest in the profession has decreased. In China, the government solves the problem with its visible hand, encouraging some careers and discouraging others. In Brazil, the market does this, and it does it imperfectly.
The monthly fee for an engineering course at a good private school can cost around R$7,000. For business administration or economics courses, prices are lower and the salaries offered by the market to those who have just left college are higher. It’s a poorly played game.
In , entrepreneurs from Massachusetts and California created two giants, MIT and Caltech. There the invisible hand of the market pushed the country forward. It’s a game well played. The tycoons of the golden age of the second half of the 19th century knew that the country needed engineers.
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