This report was prepared by a team led by María Marta Ferreyra. The core team also consisted of Lelys Dinarte Díaz, Sergio Urzúa, and Marina Bassi, and received excellent research assistance from Andrea Franco, Manuela Granda, Angelica Sánchez, and Gabriel Suárez. The work was conducted under the gen-eral guidance of Martín Rama, current Chief Economist for the Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) Region of the World Bank, and Carlos Végh, former LAC Chief Economist of the World Bank, with substantial inputs from Rita Almeida, former LAC acting practice manager for the Education Global Practice of the World Bank, and Emanuela Di Gropello, current LAC practice manager for the Education Global Practice of the World Bank. 

Preparation of the book was informed by a series of background papers. Authors of these background papers who have not been already named include Juan Esteban Carranza, Stephanie Cellini, Camila Galindo, Ana Gazmuri, Hernando Grueso, Macarena Kutscher, and Tatiana Melguizo. Empirical work for the book was underpinned by an extensive survey to directors of short-cycle programs in LAC, the World Bank Short-Cycle Program Survey (WBSCPS), developed by the team and conducted by SIMO Consulting under the leadership of Mayra Benítez and Azucena Cháidez. The team is grateful to Diego Angel-Urdinola, Ciro Avitabile, Marcelo Becerra, Sebastián Burgos, Pedro Cerdán, Veronica Díaz, Eric Jardim, Ildo Lautharte, Andre Loureiro, Carlos Medina, Rafael Santos, and Alexandria Valerio, who facilitated contacts with government agencies and provided institutional information. For providing access to adminis-trative information and supporting the WBSCPS, the team is grateful to the Ministries of Education of Brazil, Colombia, and Peru; the Ministry of Finance, Planning and Development, Dominican Republic; and the Secretariat of Higher Education, Science, Technology and Innovation (SENESCYT) in Ecuador. Servicio Nacional de Aprendizaje (SENA) in Colombia provided administrative data. Instituto Nacional de Estudos e Pesquisas Educacionais Anisio Teixeira (INEP) in Brazil provided access to restricted data, which were used to conduct on-site estimation by Renato Vieira.

The team was fortunate to receive excellent advice and guidance from three distinguished peer reviewers: Omar Arias, Nina Arnhold, and Kevin Stange. While the core team is very grateful for the guidance received, these reviewers are not responsible for any remaining errors, omissions, or interpretations. 

Additional insights from Matías Busso, Jean-Francois Houde, Renata Lemos, Hugo Ñopo, Juan Esteban Saavedra, Di Xu, and other participants of an online workshop on October 27, 29, and 30, 2020, are gratefully acknowledged. 

In preparing this book, the team benefited from conversations with Susan Ambrose, Martin Borchardt, Anthony Carnevale, Ruth Graham, Karen Kelly, C. J.  Libassi, Armando Mendoza, Angélica Natera, Juan Carlos Navarro, Christopher Neilson, Ricardo Paredes, Lino Pujol, Grant Taylor, Jorge Téllez, Daniel Toro, and Jaime Torrado. Comments from Andrés Bernasconi and Pablo Landoni, partici-pants at the CACES conference in Guayaquil (November 2019), and partici-pants at the APICE and Laspau-World Bank online events (November and December 2020, respectively) are also gratefully acknowledged. The team is grateful for the support and insights provided by senior management of the World Bank’s Education Global Practice, including not only Reema Nayar but also Global Director Jaime Saavedra and Regional Director Luis Benveniste.

Sandra Gain edited the manuscript. Patricia Katayama (acquisitions editor), Mary Fisk (production editor), and Deborah Appel-Barker (print coordinator) of the World Bank’s Formal Publishing Program were responsible for managing the design, typesetting, and printing of the book. Sergio Andres Moreno Tellez pro-vided the cover design. Carlos Molina, Shane Kimo Romig, and Gonzalo Villamizar contributed to design and communication. Sara Horcas-Rufián trans-lated the volume into Spanish, and Leonardo Padovani translated it into Portuguese. Last, but not least, the team thanks Jacqueline Larrabure for unfail-ing administrative support.