Thus, the business community turned to training as a course of action to satisfy the necessity of a highly qualified human resource. At the same time the business community began to exert pressure upon governments to move education to a higher priority in the public policy agenda. Higher taxation and enhanced efficiency in the use of public resources are gradually reducing the size and influence of populist political activists in the civil service. Political parties, with few exceptions, are no longer imposing leaders upon the citizenry or officials without track records who cannot succeed in a competitive democracy. As a result, teachers unions are undergoing a leadership substitution that rewards those who improve educational records.
Taxpayers are now vigilant of the performance of educational institutions.
Privatization and deregulation of telecommunications are also rapidly paving the road for the development of the Internet. This fact, along with the lowering of connection fees, should enable easier and more efficient access to world class educational services to the general public over the next decade, and will hopefully place pressure to improve quality of education. In the opinion of one of the participants, the United States should stay away from any effort to act in the political overcoming of interest groups abroad. Education unions in several countries of Latin America still tend to be the storage bins of nationalist and populist views of the seventies. Thus any active role by the United States in the process will fuel a long dead end debate about imperialistic practices that needs not to be revived.