UNESCO SCIENCE REPORT

Southeast Asia and Oceania
Table 27.1: Research personnel in Southeast Asia and Oceania, 2012 or closest year
Population (‘000s)
Total researchers (FTE)
Researchers per million
inhabitants (FTE)
Technicians per million
inhabitants (FTE)
Australia (2008) 21 645 92 649 4 280 1 120
Indonesia (2009) 237 487 21 349 90 –
Malaysia (2012) 29 240 52 052 1 780 162
New Zealand (2011) 4 414 16 300 3 693 1 020
Philippines (2007) 88 876 6 957 78 11
Singapore (2012) 5 303 34 141 6 438 462
Thailand (2011) 66 576 36 360 546 170
Source: UNESCO Institute for Statistics, June 2015
There is also a growing pattern of subregional university
collaboration. The ASEAN University Network established in
the late 1990s now consists of 30 universities across the ten
ASEAN countries. It has served as a model for more recent
spin-offs, such as the Pacific Island Network constituted in
2011, which consists of ten Pacific universities operating
across five countries. In parallel, many Australian and
New Zealand universities have established campuses at
universities across the region.
Four countries have a high proportion of tertiary students
enrolled in science degrees: Myanmar (23%), New Zealand
and Singapore (each with 14%) and Malaysia (13%). Myanmar
also has the highest proportion of women enrolled in tertiary
education, in general. It will be interesting to see if Myanmar
manages to maintain this high proportion of women among
students as it pursues its transition.
Women constitute half of researchers in Malaysia, the
Philippines and Thailand but remain an unknown quantity in
Australia and New Zealand, for which there are no recent data
(Figure 27.6). More than half of researchers are employed by
the higher education sector in most countries (Figure 27.7).
Academics even make up eight out of ten researchers in
Malaysia, suggesting that the multinational companies on its
soil either do not count a majority of Malaysians on their
research staff or do not conduct in-house R&D. The notable
exception is Singapore, where half of researchers are
employed by industry, compared to between 30% and 39%
elsewhere in the region. In Indonesia and Viet Nam, the
government is a major employer of researchers.
Better R&D data as vital as greater investment
Although data on gross domestic expenditure on R&D (GERD)
are rather sketchy and date back several years in many cases –
or are even non-existent for the smallest Pacific Island
states – they still illustrate the blend of scientific capacity
across Southeast Asia and Oceania. Singapore has
conceded its regional lead for R&D intensity, which shrank
from 2.3%
to 2.0% of GDP between 2007 and 2012, having been
overtaken by Australia, which has maintained a steady
investment level of 2.3% of GDP in R&D (Table 27.2).
Australia’s dominant position may be short-lived, however,
as Singapore plans to increase its GERD/GDP ratio to 3.5%
by 2015.
A comparatively high share of R&D is performed by the
business sector in four countries: Singapore, Australia, the
Philippines and Malaysia (see Chapter 26). In the case of
the latter two, this is most likely a product of the strong
presence of multinational companies in these countries.
Since 2008, many countries have boosted their R&D effort,
including in the business enterprise sector. However,
in some cases, business expenditure on R&D is highly
concentrated in the natural resource sector, such as mining
and minerals in Australia. The challenge for many countries
will be to deepen and diversify business sector involvement
across a wider range of industrial sectors.
An emerging Asia–Pacific knowledge hub
The number of scientific publications catalogued in the
Web of Science by the countries under study showed
healthy growth between 2005 and 2014, some Asian
countries even recording annual growth of 30% or more
(Figure 27.8). Fiji and Papua New Guinea were the main
contributors to publications from the Pacific Island states.
Whereas Australia and New Zealand publish more in life
sciences, the Pacific Islands tend to focus on geosciences.
Southeast Asian countries specialize in both.
Chapter 27
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