Regional development and engineering education: An analysis of Brazil's micro-regional scenario

Abstract

Regional development is fundamental to equally develop countries. This paper focus on the micro-regional aspect of engineering education and its spillovers to understand the current impact in macro regional Human Development Indexes of Education (HDI_E) and Revenue (HDI_R). A complete analysis of official government data in all micro-regions, the number of Engineering institutions, total graduates and total enabled engineers is cross-referenced with bibliographical review. This paper reaches the conclusion that not only the scenario is challenging but changes are needed to reverse the unequal situation found in the country as the presence of Engineering Universities is directly related to better results in Revenue (HDI_R) and General Education (HDI_E).