Pangasinan Fourth District Representative Christopher de Venecia (CDV) raised concerns about mechanisms in the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) that would connect all the research and development (R&D) initiatives of state universities and colleges (SUCs), especially in provinces, with appropriate markets.
In a recent budget hearing of CHED, de Venecia asked Chairman Patricia Licuanan this question even as he said that “I don’t want us to be a production mill of researches that don’t really go anywhere.”
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| Pangasinan Congressman Christopher de Venecia and CHED Chief Dr.Patricia Licuanan |
Licuanan said they don’t have it in CHED but it is part of the whole cycle of R&D. “This is one of the things we are encouraging and we are linking up people who are quite knowledgeable in this,” she said.
She assured de Venecia “this is something that we take quite seriously and we are pushing for more support for R&D”.
De Venecia again asked Licuanan if there is a specific fund that is earmarked within CHED for these market matching opportunities, if not a specific fund, perhaps a convergence program between agencies like the Department of Trade and Industry, Department of Science and Technology, Department of Agriculture for the R&D initiatives that are being undertaken by the Higher Education Office.
Licuanan admitted that while they do not have a special fund, she said de Venecia’s concern “is a good idea”.
For his part, Dr. William Padolina, project manager of Philippine California Advanced Research Institutes of CHED, said the commercialization of the researches in SUCs and Higher Education Institutions are covered by the institutional policies within the institutions, bringing them to the market is supposed to be the first part of the research, that is market research.
“You should be doing research that has been identified as something marketable. I’m sorry to say that it is a little bit tricky in all our SUCs and even in our business schools and economics faculties are not really training people to do a rigorous market reading,” Padolina commented.
De Venecia again asked, “Do we have a fund in CHED that could help enable these researches to go places and be mainstreamed and activated to help the people?”
Padolina replied, “I think it already goes through the DOST channels already, the technology applications and promotions institute can fund pre-market and even deployment to the market that agencies are allowed or mandated by the technology application and promotions institute.”
Dr. Napoleon Juanillo, CHED Director of Office of Planning, Research and Knowledge Management, added that they do have an academe industry linkage program within CHED that encourages and aggressively promote the collaboration between academe and industry.
De Venecia said it was good to hear their comments because it was stated in the Philippine Development Plan prepared by the National Economic Development Authority, “we should be shifting towards a knowledge economy”.
He added, “ And I’ve seen it in your report and that means you can be one of the cornerstones of this program. I know there are a lot of brilliant and bright ideas being generated in schools, it’s just that sometimes, and it falls short on the marketing and implementation.”--#
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