Catching up to the skills need
MARIA ELOISA I. CALDERON, BusinessWorld
05/09/2008 | 12:47 AM
Conclusion
MANILA, Philippines - Employment trends have changed since the Philippines joined the globalization bandwagon and Asian economies shaped up after the 1997 financial crisis.
Manila, however, is just playing catch-up. Only now are efforts to suit the educational curriculum to the needs of the businesses being beefed up.
In a report to Malacañang, the Presidential Task Force for Education stressed the need for a joint review by the academe and industry of curriculums to "ensure a robust supply of human capital for sustainable growth in industries where the Philippines has a comparative advantage."
The task force identified five industries as critical to providing employment: semiconductor and electronics, business process offshoring and outsourcing, maritime, travel and hospitality, and health care.
The report followed last January’s National Congress on Education, aimed at tightening linkages between higher education institutions and the jobs market. The meeting was the first since President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo created the education task force in August 2006 through Executive Order 652.
The task force consists of the Education secretary, the chairmen of the Commission on Higher Education (CHEd) and the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA), the presidential assistant for education, and five private sector representatives appointed by the President. It has the mandate of assessing, planning and monitoring the Philippine educational system.
"The government has consulted regional chamber groups and touched base with educational institutions on a regional basis to come up with better industry and academic linkage. This has never been done before," CHEd director Romeo Isaac, one of the report’s authors, said in an interview.
The Malacañang paper said the Business Processing Association of the Philippines (BPA/P) - which has drawn up a roadmap to increase its global market share to 10% from 4-5% by 2010 - would need a one million-strong workforce by the end of the decade.
"This [bigger market share] will translate to an increase in outsourcing revenues from US$3.3 billion in 2006 to US$13 billion in 2010, and one million strong workforce," the paper states, citing a presentation by BPA/P chief executive officer Oscar Sañez.
The labor workforce outside Metro Manila is expected to benefit from the thriving outsourcing business as the "roadmap also calls for the development of ’next wave’ cities in the Philippines as the demand for [offshoring and outsourcing] increases; and as infrastructures in Metro Manila reach full capacity."
The Semiconductor and Electronics Industries in the Philippines, Inc. (SEIPI), meanwhile, wants the academe to include in their engineering courses four main functions: product and test engineering, process engineering, equipment engineering, and quality assurance or failure analysis, according to the report.
The courses would equip engineering graduates with "higher value-added" competencies needed to keep existing local and multinational semiconductor companies on doing business in the country.
"The competency requirements range from basic knowledge to problem solving to innovation and change management."
The SEIPI has tied up with universities, including the De La Salle University and the Mapua Institute of Technology, which both offer engineering courses, in a bid to produce 200,000 engineering graduates by 2010.
Similar pilot programs are being rolled out in universities such as the University of the East (UE) and the Far Eastern University, where so-called apprenticeship programs remain an important element in the curriculum.
The UE has moved to strengthen the English proficiency of its graduates by including in the curriculum Communications 400, an elective whose content was patterned after a Call Center English training program.
The APC Center of the Asia Pacific College, meanwhile, has linked with eight companies that would readily absorb its graduates - computer language programmers, accountants, bookkeepers and systems developers.
"[These] are initiatives that can be used as reference by other colleges and universities," the report states
Domingo Y. Reyes, Jr., chairperson of the human resource management program of the De La Salle University-College of St. Benilde, said the school’s curriculum was designed to be in sync with the labor market’s requirements.
"In Benilde, 80% of my faculty are practitioners. Law subjects are taught by lawyers for example," he said.
"The curriculum is case-based. So that we have for instance, labor law students joining us in actual labor negotiations," said Mr. Reyes, who is a practitioner in labor law.
The college was able to prove the effectiveness of its curriculum in helping its graduates gain employment in as short as a month after applying for a job, he pointed out.
In its latest "graduate tracer study," St. Benilde found that 78.99% of its graduates from 2000 to 2004 were employed. Of the 18% unemployed, around 8% were engaged in advanced studies, while 4% reported the lack of job opportunities.
"For the graduates, the important factor that is needed for being employed is personality. The graduates have assessed that the curriculum is relevant to their first job," the tracer study noted.
While St. Benilde can be called a success story, the country’s still high single-digit unemployment rate is proof that not all graduates from other schools have found the same luck.
To cure this, the CHEd - the government body covering not only higher education institutions but also degree-granting programs in all tertiary institutions in the Philippines - is pushing for a "ladderized" education program, which bridges its own as well as TESDA’s curricular guidelines to meet industry requirements.
The program, created via Executive Order 358, allows technical and vocational students under the aegis of TESDA to move on to higher education programs under a "unified national qualification framework." Technical and vocational graduates can obtain a bachelor’s degree without going through the first and second years as their non-degree courses are credited under an "equivalency" scheme.
Technical-vocational programs and college degrees were previously independent of each other, which meant that graduates of vocational courses who wanted a college diploma had to take the full college program.
With the new scheme, technical-vocational courses can now be considered as credits for the first and second years of college. Returning technical-vocational graduates who don’t have certificates only have to go through a competency assessment.
An example is the BS Computer Science Course offered by the Asian Institute of Computer Studies. The curriculum has three Training Regulations accredited by TESDA: PC Operations on the first year, Programming on the second year, and Hardware Servicing on the third year. Each merit a TESDA diploma. On the fourth year, the student completes the rest of the course, meriting a CHEd diploma.
"The program is going to be competency-based, meaning the graduates will possess the necessary skills responsive to the demand of the industry," said William Medrano, executive director of the CHEd Office of Policy, Planning, Research and Information.
The CHEd is focusing its scholarship programs to boost enrollment in engineering, as well as in agriculture, fishery and its related courses - fields which Mr. Medrano said are crucial to national development.
But financing for these scholarship programs, however, remain anemic with Congress failing to approve a budget. The CHEd increased its funding for scholarships by 10% to P458 million this year, the first time that financing grew in the double-digits since it was started in 1994.
"It hardly moved [from 2005 and 2006 levels of P400 million]. It’s only this year that we increased by 10%. Our budget was not getting an increase," Mr. Medrano noted.
For the farm sector, the CHEd is urging local government units (LGUs) to open up jobs for "agricultural technicians" to boost farmer productivity. The initiative would absorb graduates of agriculture courses who can no longer be accommodated by the already-filled plantilla positions in rural-based government agencies, he said.
"It is our proposal that LGUs give priority to agriculture by providing technical assistance to farmers. And that could be done by recruiting agriculture graduates as agriculture technicians," Mr. Medrano said. - BusinessWorld
MANILA, Philippines - Employment trends have changed since the Philippines joined the globalization bandwagon and Asian economies shaped up after the 1997 financial crisis.
Manila, however, is just playing catch-up. Only now are efforts to suit the educational curriculum to the needs of the businesses being beefed up.
In a report to Malacañang, the Presidential Task Force for Education stressed the need for a joint review by the academe and industry of curriculums to "ensure a robust supply of human capital for sustainable growth in industries where the Philippines has a comparative advantage."
The task force identified five industries as critical to providing employment: semiconductor and electronics, business process offshoring and outsourcing, maritime, travel and hospitality, and health care.
The report followed last January’s National Congress on Education, aimed at tightening linkages between higher education institutions and the jobs market. The meeting was the first since President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo created the education task force in August 2006 through Executive Order 652.
The task force consists of the Education secretary, the chairmen of the Commission on Higher Education (CHEd) and the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA), the presidential assistant for education, and five private sector representatives appointed by the President. It has the mandate of assessing, planning and monitoring the Philippine educational system.
"The government has consulted regional chamber groups and touched base with educational institutions on a regional basis to come up with better industry and academic linkage. This has never been done before," CHEd director Romeo Isaac, one of the report’s authors, said in an interview.
The Malacañang paper said the Business Processing Association of the Philippines (BPA/P) - which has drawn up a roadmap to increase its global market share to 10% from 4-5% by 2010 - would need a one million-strong workforce by the end of the decade.
"This [bigger market share] will translate to an increase in outsourcing revenues from US$3.3 billion in 2006 to US$13 billion in 2010, and one million strong workforce," the paper states, citing a presentation by BPA/P chief executive officer Oscar Sañez.
The labor workforce outside Metro Manila is expected to benefit from the thriving outsourcing business as the "roadmap also calls for the development of ’next wave’ cities in the Philippines as the demand for [offshoring and outsourcing] increases; and as infrastructures in Metro Manila reach full capacity."
The Semiconductor and Electronics Industries in the Philippines, Inc. (SEIPI), meanwhile, wants the academe to include in their engineering courses four main functions: product and test engineering, process engineering, equipment engineering, and quality assurance or failure analysis, according to the report.
The courses would equip engineering graduates with "higher value-added" competencies needed to keep existing local and multinational semiconductor companies on doing business in the country.
"The competency requirements range from basic knowledge to problem solving to innovation and change management."
The SEIPI has tied up with universities, including the De La Salle University and the Mapua Institute of Technology, which both offer engineering courses, in a bid to produce 200,000 engineering graduates by 2010.
Similar pilot programs are being rolled out in universities such as the University of the East (UE) and the Far Eastern University, where so-called apprenticeship programs remain an important element in the curriculum.
The UE has moved to strengthen the English proficiency of its graduates by including in the curriculum Communications 400, an elective whose content was patterned after a Call Center English training program.
The APC Center of the Asia Pacific College, meanwhile, has linked with eight companies that would readily absorb its graduates - computer language programmers, accountants, bookkeepers and systems developers.
"[These] are initiatives that can be used as reference by other colleges and universities," the report states
Domingo Y. Reyes, Jr., chairperson of the human resource management program of the De La Salle University-College of St. Benilde, said the school’s curriculum was designed to be in sync with the labor market’s requirements.
"In Benilde, 80% of my faculty are practitioners. Law subjects are taught by lawyers for example," he said.
"The curriculum is case-based. So that we have for instance, labor law students joining us in actual labor negotiations," said Mr. Reyes, who is a practitioner in labor law.
The college was able to prove the effectiveness of its curriculum in helping its graduates gain employment in as short as a month after applying for a job, he pointed out.
In its latest "graduate tracer study," St. Benilde found that 78.99% of its graduates from 2000 to 2004 were employed. Of the 18% unemployed, around 8% were engaged in advanced studies, while 4% reported the lack of job opportunities.
"For the graduates, the important factor that is needed for being employed is personality. The graduates have assessed that the curriculum is relevant to their first job," the tracer study noted.
While St. Benilde can be called a success story, the country’s still high single-digit unemployment rate is proof that not all graduates from other schools have found the same luck.
To cure this, the CHEd - the government body covering not only higher education institutions but also degree-granting programs in all tertiary institutions in the Philippines - is pushing for a "ladderized" education program, which bridges its own as well as TESDA’s curricular guidelines to meet industry requirements.
The program, created via Executive Order 358, allows technical and vocational students under the aegis of TESDA to move on to higher education programs under a "unified national qualification framework." Technical and vocational graduates can obtain a bachelor’s degree without going through the first and second years as their non-degree courses are credited under an "equivalency" scheme.
Technical-vocational programs and college degrees were previously independent of each other, which meant that graduates of vocational courses who wanted a college diploma had to take the full college program.
With the new scheme, technical-vocational courses can now be considered as credits for the first and second years of college. Returning technical-vocational graduates who don’t have certificates only have to go through a competency assessment.
An example is the BS Computer Science Course offered by the Asian Institute of Computer Studies. The curriculum has three Training Regulations accredited by TESDA: PC Operations on the first year, Programming on the second year, and Hardware Servicing on the third year. Each merit a TESDA diploma. On the fourth year, the student completes the rest of the course, meriting a CHEd diploma.
"The program is going to be competency-based, meaning the graduates will possess the necessary skills responsive to the demand of the industry," said William Medrano, executive director of the CHEd Office of Policy, Planning, Research and Information.
The CHEd is focusing its scholarship programs to boost enrollment in engineering, as well as in agriculture, fishery and its related courses - fields which Mr. Medrano said are crucial to national development.
But financing for these scholarship programs, however, remain anemic with Congress failing to approve a budget. The CHEd increased its funding for scholarships by 10% to P458 million this year, the first time that financing grew in the double-digits since it was started in 1994.
"It hardly moved [from 2005 and 2006 levels of P400 million]. It’s only this year that we increased by 10%. Our budget was not getting an increase," Mr. Medrano noted.
For the farm sector, the CHEd is urging local government units (LGUs) to open up jobs for "agricultural technicians" to boost farmer productivity. The initiative would absorb graduates of agriculture courses who can no longer be accommodated by the already-filled plantilla positions in rural-based government agencies, he said.
"It is our proposal that LGUs give priority to agriculture by providing technical assistance to farmers. And that could be done by recruiting agriculture graduates as agriculture technicians," Mr. Medrano said. - BusinessWorld
