‘Unskilled grads’ create job mismatch

The Philippine Business for Education yesterday said the country’s tertiary education system is now facing a serious problem of producing ‘unskilled’ college graduates resulting in a rise in joblessness.

PBEd executive director Love Basillote said the employability of a number of college students is a perennial problem for the country.

The 2018 data of the Philippine Statistics Authority shows 21.9 percent or 508,080 college graduates form part of the 2.32 million jobless Filipinos– proof of the PBEd assertion.

PSA also showed 13.7 percent or 317,840 of the unemployed were college undergraduates while 29.4 percent of 682,080 were junior high school level graduates of the old curriculum.

There were 21.3 percent or 853,320.6 college graduates of the four million, 14.5 percent or 580,899 were college undergraduates and 33.1 or 1,326,052.2 percent have completed junior high school level.

The unemployment problem has been a serious concern for different labor groups.

Lawyer Jose Sonny Matula, president of the Federation of Free Workers, said: “There is not enough local jobs to accommodate the graduates. That’s the reason why they look for overseas employment.”

According to Basillote, the reason for the failure of a big number of college graduates can be the lack of skills needed by various industries and they are having difficulty getting hired.

“There has to be an emphasis on learning – ensuring that they will learn the skills they need for future employment,” Basillote said.

“Also, focus on high quality teaching in the classroom, regarding the delivery of education, a more decentralized approach and empowering the schools to come up with the solutions (are needed in order to address the employability of the college graduates),” Basillote stressed.

He asserted that lack of skills or none at all has a direct effect on the “competitiveness and growth of the country’s economy” because they are closely connected to each other.

FFW has the same point of view as Matula stressed that it “is job mismatch. There is a need for schools to coordinate with industries to know the job requirements.”

However, Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce, an independent, nonprofit research and policy institute conducted an analysis on government education data and found that “people are more likely to get a job out of college if they choose a major with a clear career path, such as business. They also stand to make a lot more money if they choose a math or science major over liberal arts.”

Basillote said PBEd strongly believes that the academe, government and industries must coordinate and discuss a plan on how to improve the college students’ skills.

“It is an interconnected set of solutions that aligns education and training to national competitiveness,” she said.