Philippine Experiencein Scienceand Technology Education The Philippines ranks low in terms of the number of R&D personnel. In 1992 the ratio of the number of scientists and engineers per million population was 152. From the supply side, this low level of S&T and R&D personnel is a result of the country's educational systemthat producesvery few science and engineering graduates. While the number of students at the tertiary level is high in the Philippines, students taking up scienceand engineering courses are few. A big policy problem confronting the present educational system is educational "mismatch"-while there is a great demand for technical and engineering graduates by local industries, private tertiary schools continue to produce nontechnical graduates. One of the factors that explains this is that private schools prefer not to go into these technical related courses because of their high laboratory requirement, which is capital-intensive. Nontechnical courses, on the other hand, are less laboratory-intensive and therefore less capital-intensive. The pool of R&D manpower is dominated by people with basic college degrees but generally have very limited advanced technical training. This in itself presents a big stumbling block becausethe new technologies available are already in advanced state and require special technical skills. Thus, the inadequate R&D manpower places the country in a very disadvantaged position because it does not have enough technical capability to adopt, through R&D, developed technologies in the market. In other words, with inadequate technological capability, the Philippines may find it difficult to catch up in terms of accessto and mastery of the key emerging or leading-edgetechnologies. This, in turn, will negatively affect its future growth and international competitiveness. A recent survey conducted by PillS (Cororaton et Ill. 2000) on the R&D activities of government agencies and SUCs found that more than 30 percent of R&D personnel with Ph.D. degrees are in social sciences while only less than 5 percent are in engineering and technology (Figures 18 and 19). About 15 percent are in agriculture-related sectors. This inadequate supply of R&D manpower can be traced back to the poor state of basic education in the country. This problem is rooted in the teacher training policy of the country and the public perception of the teaching profession (Magpantay 1995).He says,"To be able to teach in high schools,teachers must have a Bachelor of Science in Education (BSE) with a major and minor field. This degree program is short in content and heavy in methodology. In
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