RI education worst in Asia: Survey
RI education worst in Asia: Survey
SINGAPORE (AFP): Indonesia has the worst education system in
Asia, according to a new survey of foreign business executives
working in 12 countries in the region.
Japan, Singapore and South Korea ranked the best, and as a
result they have the highest quality labor forces, the Hong Kong-
based Political and Economic Risk Consultancy (PERC) said in
announcing the finding on Sunday.
China and India were not high on the list, but because of
their huge population, they have a large pool of highly-skilled
labor army in niche industries, and had the potential to become
formidable competitors in the future.
Educational standards in Southeast Asia rated poorly,
particularly in Indonesia.
The survey included several criteria such as the overall
impression of the quality of the local educational system, and
the cost of production labor. It covered the availability of high
quality production labor, the cost and availability of clerical
and highly qualified management staff, proficiency in English and
overall skill of the work force.
(The accompanying table provides the average scores for each
country).
"The first step to having a quality work force is developing a
quality education system," the PERC report said. "This takes time
and money, and some Asian countries have been much more
successful than others at doing this."
It said Asia's most economically developed countries have
invested heavily in education, and was one of the factors which
have accounted for their success.
"Our survey indicates that expatriates today are even more
impressed with how Korea has pushed its educational system to
produce a quality labor force than they are with Japan," it said.
Lacking in natural resources, Asian "tiger" economies like
Taiwan and Singapore have recognized that "labor was their main
asset with which to attract foreign investment and stimulate
economic development" and compete with new high-growth areas such
as China and India.
PERC criticized Southeast Asian countries like the Malaysia,
the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam for viewing China more as a
competitor rather than a source of growth.
"Instead of trying to work through the challenge of how to use
China and India's economic growth to their best advantage, most
Southeast Asian countries are focusing on how to protect their
domestic industries," PERC said.
It praised Singapore for responding to the challenges by
further opening up its economy and bringing in more skilled
expatriates to work for home-bred companies, despite some
resentment among the local work force.
Such a policy, while it may be "painful to swallow
politically", is more effective in the medium term in improving
the competitiveness of the local labor force, PERC said.
The consultancy cautioned that the impact of the growing labor
force in China and India will be "profound" to both Asia and the
world.
"Both countries have almost unlimited pools of low cost
production labor as well as huge numbers of engineers,
scientists, computer programmers and other types of well-
educated, skilled labor," it noted.
While India has been making a mark in using its top labor
force to develop a world-class computer software industry, it can
also move to harness its vast potentials to make it a
manufacturing powerhouse like China.
China, on the other hand, "can take a page out of India's book
and move more into knowledge industries" like computer
programming and research.
These moves will bring the two "elephant economies" into
competition with Asia's "tiger economies" in a wider range of
industries, including manufacturing and services, PERC said.