Entrepreneurship courses hard to sell

CEBU, Philippines - Because of our different concept of employment, the academe is finding it hard to sell business management courses such as entrepreneurship, which enables creation of more employers.

"We are finding it hard to sell some of our programs in the business management courses because not a lot of students are attracted to it. Most students would rather want to be employees than become employers themselves," said the Dean of the College of Commerce and the Graduate School of Business Management and Administration of the University of San Jose- Recoletos Dr. Edgar R. Detoya.

He said that it has been a challenge for them to promote entrepreneurship and encourage students to take this kind of courses.

Other than entrepreneurship, other courses like the secretarial or office administration are also dying because only a few are taking it.

Detoya said that here in the country, people have biases on white collar jobs so most of the populace are taking around 90 percent white collar courses than vocational.

He said that this has also created knowledge and skills mismatch because most qualifications required by the industry could mostly be found on vocational graduates because most often they have the qualified skills for available jobs.

"Filipinos have the mindset that vocational courses are not a good option but they do not know that it is where the money or the job is especially abroad," said University of Southern Philippines Foundation (USPF) assistant dean Liza Caro.

She said that most people abroad value the kind of work that is done and not measure the value according to the level of education achieved by the employee, which is very much different here in the country wherein diplomas are usually seen as a ticket for success and not skills.

Both academicians agreed that school curriculum should be attuned to the demand of today's time so that the widening gap between the industry requirements and the human resources that the academe produce will lessen.

 Detoya said that the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) has been making an effort to streamline the courses offered under the business administration program but there are more essential courses that have not been included.

He said that the academic institutions cannot just impose new curriculum without the approval of CHED which can also be a reason why there is a widening gap between the industry and the academe especially that the superstructure does not evolve as fast as the developments of the field so when their are upgrades, its usually outdated already.—Rhia de Pablo