NXPO Executive Board Meeting was recently held with Prof. Dr. Anek Laothamatas, Minister of Higher Education, Science, Research and Innovation (MHESI), serving as the chairman.
The 2022 action plan of NXPO was presented to the board. The action plan addresses NXPO’s four main missions:
- Higher education, science, research and innovation (HESRI) policy and system reform. The work in this area will continue from the previous year, with the focus on system reform and building a healthy innovation ecosystem. A good and cohesive policy and reform will lead to the targets set in the 7-year HESRI plan such as 2% gross expenditures on R&D (currently at 1.14% of GDP), Thailand’s level of S&T capability on par with that of Taiwan, Singapore and Korea, and 20 patent applications per 100,000 people.
- Mechanisms and measures to promote the HESRI development. New mechanisms and measures will be designed with the focus on building an innovation-driven economy for sustainable and long-term growth, strengthening the grassroots economy and promoting social sciences, humanities and arts. The targets to be achieved by 2027 include creating additional 1,000 IDEs (Innovation Driven Enterprises) with 1 billion THB annual sales, lifting poor people in 10 target provinces out of poverty and having a knowledge system for social sciences, humanities and arts that provides solutions to social issues.
- Manpower development plan. The focus will be on promoting lifelong learning, upskill/reskill/new skill framework, manpower development and planning to meet the requirements of employers and the national development plan, and higher education quality improvement. The plan aims to have the proportion of STEM graduates reaching 65%, Thai universities listed in the top 200 of World University Ranking, a Talent Hub Megaproject providing 10,000 talents with access to lifelong, anytime, anywhere education.
- Strengthening a policy development process through 5 programs, including Thailand Innovation Policy Accelerator (TIPA), Foresight, Systems Research, HESRI Data Analysis for Capacity Monitoring and Benchmarking, and International Collaboration.
As for the 2021 performance, a number of projects have been launched such as a project matching university to industry to co-design courses that will produce workforce meeting the requirements of industry, a proposal to revise the terms and conditions of government scholarship program to allow scholarship recipients to work for the private sector, Talent Utilization Platform for National Talent Pool and an Innovation Fund for SMEs. NXPO continues to carry out several initiatives such as “University as a Marketplace”, developing guidelines for universities to set up a holding company, a white paper on circular economy (CE) and CE anchor programs.
