Engineering: issues, challenges and opportunities for development ...

ENGINEERING: ISSUES CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES FOR DEVELOPMENT The Frascati Manualprovides guidelines on themeasurement of research anddevelopment.ing or apprenticeships associated with academic study). In somecountries, the level of some polytechnic institutions has upgradedover time to university status (this is also true, for instance, forthe training of nurses and other medical personnel).4.1.4 UNESCO statistics andindicators in Science& Technology, Research& DevelopmentRoughly at the same time as the OECD , UNESCO also initiatedits first international surveys in science and technology. Theywere intended to cover all S&T activities in a country but inpractice, like those of the OECD , became mainly focused onmeasurement of R&D only. The provisional UNESCO guidelinesfor the surveys had to take into account the very diverse politicaland economic structures of the Organization’s Member States,which grouped ‘capitalist countries’ (many already membersof the OECD ), ‘socialist/communist countries’ and ‘developingcountries’. UNESCO had to develop a particular institutionalsector breakdown for the common reporting of S&T and R&Dresources that – though both were based on the UN SNA classifications– was very dissimilar from those of the OECD (indeed,only the Higher Education sector breakdowns were identical).The principal theoretical contribution of UNESCO to the systematicmeasurement of total S&T expenditures and personnel inthe global economy date back to 1978 and its ambitious RecommendationConcerning the International Standardization for Statisticson Science and Technology and related practical guidelines.The Recommendation suggested a complete and detailedinventory of the ‘scientific and technological activities’ (STA)to be measured:■■■Research and Experimental Development (R&D), similar tothe OECD Frascati Manual definitions.Science and Technology Education and Training (STET) atbroadly the third level.Scientific and Technological Services (STS).The coverage of the STS group was complete for the mid-1970s but is today outdated and is, accordingly, in serious needof revision. It does not, for instance, take into account recentfields such as space sciences, information and communicationsservices, innovation, biotechnologies or nanotechnologies)and is, accordingly, in serious need of revision.Comparisons of OECD and UNESCO data were not easy, especiallyfor S&T and R&D expenditures. At the time, OECD wasmeasuring in US dollars for its international assessments ofexpenditure – a moderately uncomplicated approach giventhe relative homogeneity of its Member States. This was howevernot the case for UNESCO which was reduced to publishingits expenditure data in national currencies and that didnot facilitate international analysis. These currency conversionproblems have been gradually overcome following the launchof Purchasing Power Parities (PPPs), now systematically usedfor most international comparisons of financial data.Given the technical problems with expenditure, one wouldhave expected that personnel data would be easier to handlefor international comparisons. Even here, there were setbackshowever due to issues such as confusion between occupationaland educational criteria in the UNESCO guidelines. Also,and with the effect of making comparisons yet more difficult,UNESCO personnel data were often reported by head-count(whereas the OECD used full-time equivalents) and measuredstaff in a broad range of S&T activities (whereas OECD datawas focused only on staff in R&D activities).In other words, the UNESCO figures from UNESCO MemberStates (both expenditure and personnel) were much higherwhen compared to the corresponding OECD data for OECDMember States. In the days of the Cold War, this manifestedin an apparent dominance of socialist/communist countriesin S&T resources (resources that were to a high degree associatedwith the military) and raised concern in the West (wherethe critical competence in data analysis had perhaps not yetreached its best!).Statistical work at UNESCO was hampered by drastic budgetcuts after the withdrawal of a number of the Organization’smember countries (among which its principal economic contributor,the USA) in the middle of the 1980s. It was only in 1999,with the creation of the new independent UNESCO Institute forStatistics (UIS) installed in Montreal, Canada (and replacing theformer Division of Statistics), that UNESCO’s statistical activitieson education and literacy, S&T, and culture and communicationrecovered. This required intensified in-house work andcooperation on data collection, diffusion and methodologicaldevelopments with the other international agencies, and moreof its own or out-sourced analytical efforts.4.1.5 The OECD/ Eurostat CanberraManual on the measurementof stocks and flows of S&TpersonnelIn the late 1980s, serious concern was expressed in a numberof Western economies (notably the United States) that crucialmismatches might soon occur on the labour market betweenthe supply and the demand for engineers, scientists and technicians.Of particular concern were the imminent massivedepartures of people who had begun their S&T careers during74