SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY, ENGINEERING AND MATHEMATICS: WHERE IS THE PLACE OF DEMOGRAPHY? A POSITION PAPER ON DEMOGRAPHY AND STEM

The presentation is a position paper on the interconnections between the education policy, curriculum choices on science, technology, engineering and mathematics and the place of demography. The study is aggregate of thoughts complemented with archival review of existing literature and empirical analysis on admission trends and population growth. It was also firstly presented in one of the several departmental seminars. The study emphasised that demographic trends and growth are the main engine for technological progress. The study portrays demographic trends as crucial engine for technological progress and also works as the drivers of human capital towards achievement of economic prosperity. The result revealed wider gender gap that range from 41.4% to 51.5% in both pre-and postSTEM policy, though it finally stablised at 41.5% in 2009. The study positioned demographers as the conduit for delivery of optimum population or population explosion via assisted fertility technology e.g. in-vitro fertilization (IVF), preimplantation genetic diagnosis, human reproductive cloning, fetal DNA in maternal plasma, and genetic diagnosis).