After graduation, what's next?

This is graduation month. Many students across the country have finally received their diplomas, completed tertiary education and are now faced with the challenge of getting a job.

The summer of 2010 saw around 848,000 new and old college graduates looking for work. Perhaps this year it will reach a million or more. This situation has become more complicated with the return of our OFWs from Libya, Bahrain, Japan, New Zealand and possibly Filipino teachers laid off from their work in America – all of them jobless! So, what do we do now?

Apart from the lack of job opportunities in the country, what is more disheartening is that most of our graduates do not qualify. Most of our college graduates with four-year degree diplomas end up as fast food servers, sales ladies, encoders, clerks or become OFWs doing menial jobs because they do not meet the industry standards.

Simply stated most of these graduates particularly the ones coming from the provinces (and the ones coming from low-quality schools in the metropolis) have a weak command of the English language, poor analytical and thinking skills and have not truly mastered any specialized skill that will ensure them a job after graduation. Yes, they can read and write, perhaps comprehend simple paragraphs but have difficulty in conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing and evaluating information. Furthermore, they cannot effectively communicate their observations and reflections. In other words, they are not competent. They do not possess the qualification, proficiency and experience to meet the standards of employment. Companies needing people easily get turned off and find themselves desperately seeking for good ones.

What are companies looking for in an applicant anyway? Today, where technology is as important as having excellent communication and social skills, companies are looking for people who are attuned to the times, are abreast in current events, can communicate well their ideas, can discuss issues, problems, concerns in detail, are armed with the skills and knowledge of the job they are applying for, are driven by excellence and are willing to work hard to make a significant contribution to the company.

Once you have graduated from college, you are expected to have learned the basic skills. It is sad, but nowadays employers end up going back to teaching the ABCs of communication and ethical conduct at work. Shouldn’t these have been already ingrained in all our students early on? Where did we go wrong here?

How can DepEd, TESDA and CHED address not only the “weakened” intelligence of our youth but also the standards of moral values?

One of the observations of CHED Secretary Patricia Licuanan was the alarmingly high number of colleges in the country that do not meet the requirements and standards of CHED. Licuanan further said that CHED will implement a rationalization plan to streamline the education system that is currently crowded with more than 2,000 institutions. Let’s hope they tighten the buckle, otherwise, we will be seeing more colleges, universities, state and local universities in cities and provinces whose products have consistently underperformed in licensure exams and who have not gotten any clearance from/ or accreditation by CHED.

Looking back though I wonder if these problems in education are confined in the tertiary level. We are in a state of an educational crisis where students are not gaining the basic knowledge in their elementary years, not meeting the national and international norms in high school and where college graduates are not properly equipped with both the knowledge and skills to succeed in a job.

Faced with all these problems in our educational system, why is it taking so long for the DepEd and CHED to decide about the additional 2 years of schooling? Why can’t they just follow the universal system being used in all countries for centuries now? Why do our leaders seem to be always playing with the fate of our people?

It is very clear that we need to add more years in the educational development of the youth particularly giving importance to preschool, grade school and high school and where college becomes a specialized study for a profession that will provide sustainability.

Being literate is a requirement for succeeding in this modern, advanced, technological, industrial global society. According to a UN report, “Countries with a high illiteracy rate are more likely to be disadvantaged in the global economy. If a populace is not literate, it cannot be as involved in high tech jobs. New careers in the sciences, mathematics, and technology are primarily established in countries that have literate populations.”

As a matter of fact, last year for lack of local expertise, First Philec Solar Corp., the only Filipino-owned company making silicon wafers for solar power, decided to move its research and development laboratory to Singapore. This is such a loss of investment in the country. What a missed opportunity! The First Philec resident and CEO, Dr. Dan Lachica, even said, “while there is the desire to set up the research and development lab in the Philippines, there are a few PhDs and post graduate scientists and engineers able to do solar energy R & D.” Although he acknowledged that there was a local capability of workers to fabricate things, we still lack the expertise in the area of R&D.

Education in this country has, with notable exceptions, been imperfect and deficient. This is due in the first place to a lack of understanding on the part of some educators of the scope and purpose of education, and to the erroneous methods adopted to carry it out. Hazy ideas as to the purpose of instruction, congested curricula in an attempt to dump into the mind of the child loads upon loads of information without considering his capacity of assimilation, unsystematic planning characterized at times by an indifference to progressive methods of teaching and at other times by sudden and ill-considered divisions to introduce the most radical changes, are a serious menace to the cause of education in this country. 

All that I say here is born of the sincere desire to have our educators improve the system to the best of their ability and within our means to the end that our children and young people may enjoy the best educational facilities possible. But it is certainly obvious that the people and the cause of education itself will vastly gain by a clear exposition of the objectives, systems and methods of instruction as determined and adopted by the officials concerned. 

It is time for the government particularly the leading agencies in education to decide on what measures to take to make that first positive step toward the improvement of the educational system. Go back to the drawing table now and discuss the 12-year plan with an open mind for the future of our children. 

The people must then be informed; and that official statement and exposition will be the basis of constructive discussion, with the result that the best minds of the country, in and out of the government, will be in a position to cooperate towards the formulation of the true aims of education, and towards the adoption of the best system and methods of teaching possible. It is a subject in which the people are deeply interested, and it is the way of democracy to present for a frank discussion on subjects of paramount importance to the nation and to our future.

P-Noy should strengthen his lead in the field of education. A good educational ladder and system will definitely get this country moving. It will lead our nation toward progress and stability. In his fight against poverty, he must not sacrifice self-reliance, dignity and sustainability for easy gains in immediate gratification and quick fixes. He must go to the root cause of poverty. That is education.