A March 26 editorial of a Dumaguete online newspaper called for a serious look at our educational system. The write-up was triggered by the recent outcomes of various job fairs wherein less than 10 percent were hired by the recruiters in spite of the thousands of vacancies and job opportunities available.
With the March 2017 graduations, it would mean that tens of thousands of college graduates will, once more, join the workforce. The question is, will they really be able to land a job?
In the 2016 survey of Social Weather Stations, approximately 9.1 million Filipinos have remained unemployed. With the 2017 graduates, what will the figure be?
Researches disclose that 22 percent of people without a job have actually attended college, while 19 percent have in reality graduated. What does this imply? It shows that there is a great divide between what academic institutions teach and the demands of the job market. Students are not getting the skills and capabilities necessary to stock up available jobs after completing their respective courses. Schools continue to offer, and students persist enrolling in traditional courses without seriously probing into the demands of the different industry sectors.
Likewise, the quality of graduates has also substantially degenerated such that professions needing qualifying examinations like medicine, accountancy, library science, and others undergo higher rates of failure.
For instance, in nursing, the passing rate in 1998 was 55.8 percent then in 2006, it plummeted to 45 percent.
In 2010, it became a stumpy 39 percent. As a result, those who frantically need work but do not meet the requirements and are not eligible in their desired professions, settle for jobs such as becoming domestic helpers or baby sitters, caregivers for the aged and blue-collar workers, here or abroad.
Still, there is a huge number of unemployed people who are not able to take on available jobs because these jobs are not truly matched with what they have learned in schools.
However, more than the colossal divide between education and the need of industries, one big cause of soaring unemployment in the country is the government’s inability to create jobs for its people.
In Dumaguete, there is a plan to build parking spaces underground. With this ambitious endeavor, it is hoped that a substantial number of jobs will be created. Hopefully, the contractors will not bring in their own people, if they do, then Dumaguetenos cannot really look forward to having a job in this undertaking. With a bit of luck, the city’s chief executive can negotiate a position wherein the city’s residents will be given priority to the jobs that will need to be filled.
But more than anything else, parents’ misdirected ambition for their sons and daughters is a root cause of the country’s high unemployment rate.
They want their children to work in air-conditioned offices, obtain white-collar jobs even when their children’s abilities lie somewhere else.
The resulting mismatch in skills and abilities leads to people not landing in jobs or people easily retrenched because they are incapable of doing their duties, all because they are outrageously incompatible with the job.
Thus, even with a series of job fairs, people have remained JOBLESS.
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Author’s email: legis616821@gmail.com
