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16 percent have master's degrees. sites and other public resources, so we conducted phone interviews and then made field visits to 33 schools in seven countries. Ultimately, we obtained detailed information from 18 schools that have or are about to create Ph.D. programs. We suspect that these schools—and several major Brazilian universities that declined to participate—supply the bulk of Ph.D. graduates in Latin America and will continue to do so in the next ten years. The Situation Now While few studies are available about postgraduate education in Latin America, a 2005 World Bank report from Lauritz Holm-Nielsen, Kristian Thorn, José Joaquin Brunner, and Jorge Balán considered "Regional and International Chal- lenges to Higher Education in Latin America." That report identified several key challenges, including an overwhelming lack of data, great differences in performance among coun- tries, high dropout rates, high percentages of students going abroad for higher education, and curricula that are of low quality and out of date. These challenges are made worse by the fact that, except for Brazil, few schools have many faculty with doctoral degrees. In addition, a high percentage of faculty in Latin American schools must hold multiple jobs because their sala- ries are low compared with jobs in industry, making the staff- ing of doctoral programs even less of an option. Latin American schools have little institutional involve- ment with industrial stakeholders, except in teaching. They rarely follow up with students once they've graduated, and they make insufficient efforts to connect academic fields to the job market. They also have low involvement in the R&D being done by private industry, which leaves the universities without much current input or financing. Of course, these data are sketchy and highly general- ized. There are many exceptions, and some Latin Ameri- can schools have already demonstrated rapid improvement. Among the rest, there is a great deal of potential, creating a situation that is open for change. We believe that more schools would embrace a Ph.D. program if they understood why it is important—and how to implement one. Big Obstacles Schools that currrently run Ph.D. programs, as well as schools that might like to launch them, face several major obstacles they must overcome to be successful. Insufficient funding. State funding for research is very limited, except in Brazil, and it is rare that schools receive endowment donations from industry, alumni, or philanthropists. Except in elite schools, where full-time faculty are paid between $50,000 and $60,000 in U.S. dollars, salaries are too low for professors to dedicate their nonteaching time to research, so many faculty focus their efforts on consulting. Because Latin American schools also commonly hire many part-time faculty, even these elite schools can rarely gather enough research-oriented faculty to launch doctoral programs. The Ph.D. programs that do exist tend to be small. While Ph.D. programs at the schools we surveyed meet a reasonable standard of quality, library resources are small and scholarships are underfunded. On the other hand, at some schools, the Ph.D. candidates don't need scholarships—they tend to be senior executives who can pay their own way. Latin American schools often try to save money by not awarding substantial teaching credits to the individuals who supervise Ph.D. students, but we see this as a false economy. If a school paid for better supervision, it would achieve lower dropout rates and improved results. Lack of money does not have to be a terminal roadblock. Several schools are already finding ways to improve research and endowment funding. Wealthy individuals have created private universities throughout Latin America. If these indi- viduals are made aware of the importance of Ph.D. educa- tion, they are likely to fund doctoral programs as well. Disorganized management of educational systems. Neither the governments nor the schools themselves devote much effort to managing their national university systems; there is no continual striving for improvement. The leading universities seem comfortable with their current situations and reluctant to institute major changes. At the same time, there is great social status attached to being educated in foreign countries, 48 BizEd JULY/AUGUST 2008 It is estimated that, in Colombia, only 1.4 percent of faculty have doctoral degrees and only