Educated, unemployed

Columnist Randy David is absolutely correct in saying: “The larger problem, as many see it, stems primarily from a mismatch between what the educational system prepares young people for, and the kind of jobs the economy offers. I, too, have always believed that a modern society must promote a coupling of the two systems—but without reducing education to a sheer tool of the economy.”

Survey after survey shows that after spending their formative years acquiring competencies and the so-called life skills, a large percentage of our youth can’t land a decent job—one with respectable career opportunities—with the skills that they have. To be precise, 45.4 percent of the total unemployed population have reached high school while 33.1 percent are either degree holders or have at least reached college. That translates to 1.347 million with high school and 980,000 with college training.

Director Dominique Tutay of the Bureau of Local Employment shared these figures at the National Career Advocacy Congress organized by the Departments of Labor and Employment, of Education, and of Science and Technology, the Commission on Higher Education, and the Philippine Regulatory Commission. Tutay also pointed out that the unemployment rate of our youth is at 17.3 percent, which is more than twice the national unemployment rate at 7.5 percent.

Randy David points out that preserving the autonomy of education is only achievable with the government’s active intervention and commitment. “It is a task that cannot be left to individual families to figure out. They do not have the resources and the information needed to sort out this complex problem in the long term.”

On the other hand, when Inquirer founding chair Eggie Apostol launched the Education Revolution to move communities to get organized and help improve the schools that serve them, she was responding to an oft-repeated comment from education reform advocates that education is too big to be left to the government alone.

For meaningful, sustainable and lasting reform to occur, there has to be a continuing conversation among education stakeholders, industry and the government.

The DepEd’s reform agenda revolves around K-to-12 while the CHEd is bolstering its drive toward national development and global competitiveness via its Access, Capacity and Excellence  roadmap. From the CHEd’s perspective as presented by Chair Patricia B. Licuanan, “higher education expands and enhances the career and life choices of individuals,” and in itself, higher education is an instrument for poverty alleviation and human capital formation.

Recently, Jose Mari P. Mercado, the president and CEO of the IT & Business Process Association of the Philippines, revealed that in partnership with the CHEd, a 21-unit service management specialization track would be offered by 17 state universities and colleges within the next two years. “We now also have the Philippine Software Industry Association developing a minor specific to IT, while the Health Information Management Outsourcing Association of the Philippines is developing a minor for health care. These initiatives essentially expand the talent pool and improve the industry’s sustainability,” he said.

In their research work titled “Education to Employment: Designing Systems that Work,” which they conducted for the McKinsey Center for Government, Mona Mourshed, Diana Farrell and Dominic Barton described a paradox: high levels of youth unemployment and a shortage of critical skills at the same time. “Leaders everywhere are aware of the possible consequences, in the form of social and economic distress, when too many young people believe that their future is compromised. Still, governments have struggled to develop effective responses—or even to define what they need to know,” the authors said.

The key findings of Mourshed, Farrell and Barton are that 75 million youth are unemployed, that half of them are not sure their postsecondary education has improved their chances of finding a job, and that almost 40 percent of employers say a lack of skills is the main reason for entry-level vacancies. These findings are based on information drawn from a survey of over 8,000 education providers, youth and employers in nine countries.

The authors warn: “If young people who have worked hard to graduate from school and university cannot secure decent jobs and the sense of respect that comes with them, society will have to be prepared for outbreaks of anger or even violence. The gap between the haves and the have-nots in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development is at a 30-year high, with income among the top 10 percent nine times higher than that of the bottom 10 percent.”

Mourshed, Farrell and Barton studied over 100 education-to-employment approaches in 25 countries to see what the successful ones have in common. The short answer lies in a key education reform concept: There is no one-size-fits-all solution. The system has to be designed collaboratively by the major stakeholders—the employers, the education providers, and the youth themselves.

Education is not just a means to an end; the acquisition of competencies and job-readiness is just one aspect of its complexity. Education is a public value, which means that the measure of its true worth to society rests on how well, or how poorly, it enables educated individuals to perform their various tasks as citizens. In that sense, education—or, more accurately, education of the right quality—is a moving target.

Butch Hernandez ([email protected]) is the executive director of the Eggie Apostol Foundation and education lead for talent development at the IT & Business Process Association of the Philippines.