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

ENGINEERING: ISSUES CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES FOR DEVELOPMENT■ HRST flows: ‘...the number of people who do not fulfil anyof the conditions for inclusion in the HRST at the beginningof a time period but gain at least one of them during theperiod (inflow) as well as the number of people who fulfilone or other of the conditions of the definition of HRSTat the beginning of a time period and cease to fulfil themduring the period (outflow)’ (paragraph 109 of the 1995Canberra Manual). For example, the number of electronicsengineers graduating from a country’s universities in a givenyear would be an inflow.■ Internal flows: ‘...people who are part of the HRST stock,some of whose characteristics change during the timeperiod considered without, however, losing the essentialcharacteristics for inclusion in HRST’ (paragraph 112 ofthe 1995 Canberra Manual). For example, the number ofpeople who change their sector of employment or achievea qualification at a higher ISCED level.In its very broadest sense, nearly everybody who has a relevantacademic qualification or is employed in some relevant activitymay be considered HRST. It is however clear that some qualificationsor some occupations are of more specific science andtechnology policy interest than others. The HRST are thereforesplit into two major categories: university level HRST and technicianlevel HRST (who, furthermore, may have graduated in anumber of different fields of study, not all of which are of equalinterest for our analysis of the S&T labour force).of statistics whose databases are by and large more exhaustivethan the consolidated data published (the internationaldata issued being for the lowest common denominator).Some smaller industrialized countries (such as Scandinaviancountries) also keep detailed national registers of their HRSTworkforce, as do a number of professional bodies (here, internationaland national engineering associations are particularlypresent). Population censuses are undertaken only at intervalsof several years (sometimes five to ten years) but theircoverage usually surpasses that of more frequent (annual oreven quarterly) household or employment/labour force surveys.These are usually based on sampling only, meaning thatmuch of the detailed HRST information requested vanishes(such as the gender dimension of the figures).As has been already suggested, the Canberra Manual istheoretically rigorous but difficult to use in practice forharmonized comparisons, despite several significant methodologicaland analytical attempts (notably by Eurostat).The problems are essentially due to the inadequacy of therecommended data sources. ISCED was revised in 1997 witha number of breaks in coverage of levels and disciplines (asmentioned earlier) but no revision of the Canberra Manualhas followed as yet. The Canberra Manual HRST conceptand definitions are, however, now globally recognized andserve as key references for most analytical studies of the scienceand technology workforce. Engineering is fun!© UKRCThe different diplomas are then broken down into categories,the highest being the ‘core coverage’ for the top tertiary-levelqualifications in the natural sciences, engineering and technology,medical sciences, the agricultural sciences and thesocial sciences. The other categories (‘extended coverage’and ‘complete coverage‘) refer to other fields of study, suchas the humanities, or to lower-level training that may be ofless relevance.The Canberra Manual also reviews, similarly with the FrascatiManual, a number of technical issues, such as: units of classification(the reporting vs. the statistical unit); head-countvs. full-time equivalence; demographics of the HRST labourforce (age distribution, gender, national origin, ethnicity);and combined quantitative and qualitative matters includingunemployment, training and retraining, salaries, retirementages, public attitudes to science and technology, and so on.There is also a commented record of potential internationaland national data sources for the inventory of HRST stocksand flows, principally the OECD , Eurostat and UNESCOeducation and R&D statistics, the labour force statistics ofthe United Nations International Labour Office (ILO) andnational population censuses. All the basic data have beenprovided to these international bodies by national bureaus4.1.6The international study ofcareers of doctorate holdersThe most recent – and certainly most promising – internationalHRST project underway is on mapping the careers of doctorateholders (CDH) and their mobility, once again involving theOECD , the UNESCO Institute for Statistics and Eurostat. Thisproject has called for additional guidelines, which to a largeextent are drawing more from national practice than from theFrascati or the Canberra manuals.The purpose of the CDH exercise is to collect quantitative andqualitative information on a large number of variables for thisimportant category of S&T personnel, not only absolute or relativenumbers (in relation to population, labour force or otherdenominators) but also, for instance, information on their:■demographic characteristics (gender, age etc);■ educational characteristics (level of education, year of doctoraldegree, age, field of doctoral degree, graduation age,duration of doctoral degree in months, primary sources ofdoctorate funding);76