Community Colleges Have Idea for Salinas

In its own small way, amid the national and state movers and shakers, the San Diego Community College District pitched ideas Saturday to Mexican President Carlos Salinas de Gortari on how it can help his country improve economically.

Salinas was briefed by district Chancellor Augustine Gallego on a program to train Mexican professors from many of that country’s 300 technical education institutes in the latest computer and other technologies used in manufacturing.

The professors would come to San Diego for up to a semester to study with district instructors and at private companies, and also learn about new techniques through videos and satellite transmission of information to their campuses throughout Mexico.

They could then train their students in advanced manufacturing technology, business operating systems and environmental controls to qualify them for higher-level jobs beyond the assembly and other low-skill operations now prevalent in Mexico, especially at foreign-owned maquiladora plants along the border. That, it is hoped, would encourage growth in Mexican manufacturing and business sectors.

“The program encompasses both goodwill,” in terms of an education-to-education transfer, “and also the ideas behind the (proposed) free-trade agreement with Mexico where we have to have information transfer and exchanges with Mexico” to help bring the country out of its Third World economic status, Gallego said in an interview.

“I don’t want to be presumptuous, because we obviously can’t solve all of Mexico’s problems. But we are an educational institution in an area where the global economy” is becoming a reality, he said.

Before outlining the plan Saturday to Salinas, Gallego and his staff had discussions during the past several months with regional officials in Baja California connected with CECATI (Centro de Capacitacion Technologica Industrial), where there are seven CECATI educational centers.

The community college district, through its vocational education department, operated a semester-long pilot program in both 1979 and 1986 with instructors from CECATI centers in Baja California, where the Mexican professors shadowed their colleagues in San Diego as well as spent time with area companies watching how industrial techniques are applied, such as in computer-aided design and manufacturing.

Those components would be continued in some fashion under the proposed program with district administrator Stella Kellogg, who headed the pilots and would update them for a larger effort.

In addition, the San Diego district has expertise in offering the latest technical and management advances in aerospace and other industries through one of four specialized training centers set up by the state. Much of the instruction through that technical center is offered to private companies on a fee-for-service basis.

Assuming that funding can be arranged, the San Diego district would probably handle its instruction for the CECATI instructors much in the way it now contracts with California corporations and small firms.

“We already have the technology in place, and we are making a major investment in (long-distance) learning through satellite and other means,” Gallego said. “But we have to pay our faculty” in order to participate.

In the two pilot programs, district professors volunteered their time, Gallego said, but free instruction is unrealistic for a larger, continuing program.

He estimated that up to $150,000 from Mexican and American sources would be needed to pay for faculty time--up to 1,000 hours--that may be needed to prepare specialized curriculum as well as cover the cost of additional instructional equipment.

Gallego said he believes that the Mexican government will provide some funds and that the community college district can tap the U.S. Department of Labor and the Agency for International Development for help as well.

He will make a similar presentation early next month at a joint meeting of Mexican and U.S. government education officials in El Paso, Tex., to talk about binational cooperation.

In an indirect way, the Mexican government is already helping solve one problem. The government is building a dormitory at a CECATI facility in Tijuana, where visiting professors could live while studying in San Diego for a semester, Gallego said.

One of the problems encountered during the pilots was the paucity of living expenses, only about $100 a month, that the Mexican professors received while in San Diego, Gallego said. Many of the instructors ended up living several to a single room in a downtown motel, although some were placed in private homes of district instructors.

“I’d like to get something going within a year,” Gallego said, adding that the program could start off on a small scale. “Once we have some commitments, we can plan the curricula and start looking for businesses to participate. We’re not out to make money, just cover our costs and help to improve” the border economy.

“I want the district to be part of addressing the needs of 52 million people who now live along both sides of the 1,900-mile border between the U.S. and Mexico,” he said.