Competitiveness in Education

Abstract

The information technologies (IT), globalization, and the movement toward knowledge-based economies are the major forces now pushing and pulling at the Philippine educational system. Amidst such an environment, Philippine engineering and technology schools must directly compete for students, faculty, research funding, and outsourced services against other schools in the world and even against foreign-owned schools on Philippine soil. At the same time, the schools must support the efforts to make the Philippine economy globally competitive not only by supplying properly-educated human resources but also by supplying new knowledge and applying such knowledge successfully. To be able to compete, the country must concentrate support on schools that can be globally competitive. It must be its policy to attain the highest quality in the premier public institutions of higher learning. Democratic access can be achieved through the other state universities and colleges. The country can also use its comparative advantage in the field of information technologies to raise resources to enhance competitiveness in the other technology fields as well. The schools must do research because, in knowledge-based economies, those countries which can generate knowledge, and not merely apply or transmit it, will generate the most wealth. If a choice had to be made, the country should concentrate on applied, rather than basic, research because of the relative immediacy of returns which our resource-constrained educational system needs.

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