mining company, Valer also finds itself picking up the slack for Brazil's underdeveloped education system. "Teaching math and Portuguese is not part of our core business," notes Desie Ribeiro, education manager at Vale. "But because of flaws in the educational system, we frequently find ourselves in that role."Petrobras University in Rio de Janeiro confronts another challenge -- developing engineers with the brainpower to discover and produce new deepwater techniques for pumping oil from beneath 7,000 meters of ocean, rock, salt and sand. With offshore oil training becoming part of Petrobras University's core curriculum, the school aims to educate a significant portion of the estimated 8,000 to 9,000 employees who will be required for deepwater operations by 2015, far more than the country's formal education system is slated to produce. The company is world-renowned for its leading deep-water expertise.But what about those companies that do not have their own corporate universities to provide a controllable, if undersupplied, pipeline of qualified talent ready to be employed in positions critical for meeting growth expectations? Even Petrobras is facing a talent challenge given that 45% of its workforce is set to retire in the near term, taking with them a significant amount of the company's experience and know-how. Logistics company LLX, part of Eike Batista's Grupo EBX, is already experiencing the lack of a qualified labor force. With construction of the Acu Superport Industrial Complex -- eventually one of the three largest port complexes in the world -- already underway, "the lack of manpower is not going to be a problem; it already is," according to Claudio Lampert, the company's general counsel. LLX is struggling to find more than 3,000 workers to construct and operate the port.Similar demands for skilled laborers and technically trained employees in the financial services, consulting, beer and industrial sectors, among others, have many Brazilian companies worried. "We've run out of Brazilians," says Luiz Mendonca, CEO of Braskem's international business unit, a chemical company that is a global leader in bioplastics.Toward an Open-door PolicyConsidering the educational challenges and dramatic economic growth underway, it may seem desirable for Brazil to admit skilled labor selectively into the domestic economy. However, since the first presidency of Getulio Vargas from 1930 to 1945, Brazil's federal bureaucracy has included a powerful Ministry of Labor and a hierarchy of specialized courts focusing on extensive labor laws, all of which seek to protect the domestic labor market. Successive governments mostly have supported the status quo, especially with respect to limits on foreign workers. On July 7, 2011, Carlos Lupi, Brazil's current Minister of Labor, summarized the government's reluctance to issue work permits, observing that "in Brazil, we are in a growth process, and we must ensure that the labor market continues strongly for Brazilians."The volume of recent work authorizations conceded by the Ministry of Labor, a prerequisite before a work visa can be issued by a Brazilian embassy or consulate, reveals the magnitude of the problem facing Brazilian companies. During the first six months of 2011, work authorizations increased by nearly 18% over previous years, to 28,556. However, only