ABSTRACT
Like many other Latin American countries in the early 1950s Mexico could still be considered a predominantly rural society with certain modern traits attributable to the role played by its growing urbanization and its sustained, albeit limited, industrial development. The share of mining and agriculture shows their relative importance to the Mexican economy as the pillars upon which the industrialization process started in those years. To summarize, the problems which emerged relatively early in the Mexican industrialization process had their roots in a lack of efficiency in handling physical resources and technology in the productive process traceable to serious deficiencies in education and manpower training, rather than the scarcities of other production factors. The data indicate that the government's efforts in the field of education brought poor results with regard to increased efficiency in qualitative terms. The shortages of adequately skilled labour were apparently largely filled by personnel who took jobs with less educational training than actually necessary.
