By PAUL M. ICAMINA
Part I
Because engineers are scarce, the Philippines is missing out on high-end outsourcing contracts.
The Philippines has to be content with call centers and the lower end of business process outsourcing while engineering designs, for example, go to South Korea, India, Singapore, even Thailand and Malaysia and soon China and Vietnam, said Armin Luistro, president and chancellor of De La Salle University.
His concern, voiced during a recent forum that reviewed the country’s engineering education and research and development, was echoed by Dr. Emerlinda R. Roman, president of the University of the Philippines.
"Engineers who have training in R&D, computer science, Information Technology and related disciplines, have the highest global resourcing potential," she said, citing a McKinsey Global Institute report that says 4.6 million engineers could be resourced from anywhere in the world with a projected growth rate of 22 percent.
"The economic impact on the Philippines if we can p artake in engineering outsourcing is enormous," Roman said. "High-value added activities and the corresponding economic growth result when technology-based investors decide to set up in the Philippines."
"However, it requires engineers with advanced degrees," she szaid.
The Philippines simply does not have the numbers, said Luistro.
"We have very, very few experts in electrical engineering, computer science, earthquake and structural engineering, materials science, energy engineering, nanotechnology, electronics engineering, solid state physics and quantum engineering," he said. "We just have to produce more, otherwise, the few that we have will also leave."
Each year, Roman said, the Board of Investments brings to engineering colleges several technology-based investors who are potential locators in the country. "Their first question is always, how many MS and PhDs do we produce."
Months later, Roman would hear that these companies had taken their new investments in China, Vietnam, Malaysia or Indonesia.
"Technology-based companies expect human resources to be already developed, they will not invest in developing human resources," she said. "They will locate where human resources that match their needs are already available."
Because most engineering schools are privately-owned and are dependent on tuition, they tend to shy away from R&D, Roman said.
From 53,000 graduates of engineering schools each year, only 11,700 or 20 percent pass the licensure exams, she said. The Commission on Higher Education requires only an 8 percent passing rate to accredit an engineering college.
"Each time we produce one MS graduate in the UP College of Engineering, our counterpart in Vietnam produces six, in Thailand 25 and in Singapore 200," Roman said.
At UP, she observed, about 90 percent of engineering graduate students study part-time and only 10 percent are full-time. Of these students, only 10 percent, most of them full-time, actually graduate. Because of work demands, only two out of 10 part-time students graduate.
"This state of engineering education translates into low value-added activities in industry and means low economic contribution," Roman said.
"Unless we invest on education and on R&D, in strategic areas such as engineering and Information Technology at a scale that would develop a critical mass, that would keep us within fighting chance in the intense knowledge-based arena of the coming decades, then we will find ourselves watching by the sidelines," she said.
Luistro proposed a P120 million endowment fund to provide scholarships for 10 PhD students, 20 masteral students and up to P4 million reserved for competitive research grants in engineering each year.
The fund would be managed by the Engineering Research and Development for Technology consortium of UP Diliman, De La Salle University, Mapua Institute of Technology, Ateneo de Manila University, Mindanao State University-Iligan Institute of Technology, University of San Carlos, Central Luzon State University and UP Los Banos.
With P10 million each from large corporations, P5 million each from 10 medium-sized companies and P1 million each from 20 smaller benefactors, and earnings of 8 per cent per annum, up to P10 million per annum would be available exclusively for engineering education and R&D.
If there is a willing industry partner, academe can waive tuition and fees for these scholars, he said. (To be continued) -
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Topic: The Philippines Lacks Engineers (Read 1202 times)