3 Philippines universities in global employability rankings

MANILA, Philippines - Three Philippine universities were included in the latest graduate employability rankings released by international higher education information provider Quacquarelli Symonds (QS).

Ateneo de Manila University (ADMU), University of the Philippines (UP) and University of Santo Tomas (UST) were all ranked 201+ out of 300 universities around the world that were included in the list.

The employability rankings aim to provide “students with a unique tool by which to compare university performance in this area,” according to QS.

It is measured using five indicators: employer reputation, alumni outcomes, employer partnerships, employer-student connections and graduate employment rate.

Based on the rankings, ADMU has a graduate employment rate of 82.7 percent, while UP and UST both obtained 81 percent.

UST has 90.2 points in employer-student connections, while UP has 51 points in alumni outcomes.

No data were included for the three Philippine universities in the other indicators.

Stanford University in the United States topped the rankings. It was followed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (US), Tsinghua University (China), University of Sydney (Australia) and the University of Cambridge (United Kingdom).

Completing the top ten are the Ecole Polytechnique (France), Columbia University (US), University of Oxford (UK), University of California in Berkeley (US) and Princeton University (US).

Duterte gov’t urged to reduce unemployment

Meanwhile, Senate Minority Leader Ralph Recto urged the Duterte government to match its P26.7 trillion in expected expenses in six years with the decrease in the number of unemployed, poor and hungry.

Recto described next year’s P3.35-trillion budget as the “first of six annual installments” the administration would be making in its bid to bring down poverty, hunger and unemployment by 2022.

“In effect, next year’s budget is its 15 percent down payment to achieve these goals,” Recto said, arguing for the use of jobs-poverty-hunger benchmark in assessing the budget’s efficacy.

“So for P3.3 trillion, how many people will march away from the poverty line by December next year? For P3.3 trillion, how many jobs will be created? For P3.3 trillion, how far will the GDP (Gross Domestic Product) needle move?” he added.