Toward national development and global competitiveness

Even before the Commission on Higher Education’s partnership with the IT and Business Process Association of the Philippines (Ibpap) started early in 2013, we were keenly aware of business process outsourcing as a sunrise industry that had increased its share of the country’s GDP, exports and employment quite significantly. We did not know it then, but BPO had begun actualizing its potential to bring in as much revenues as, and maybe even more than, the remittances of overseas Filipino workers.

Even before our interests converged in 2013, we were grappling separately in our respective silos with a common issue: For Ibpap, the inability of the industry to fill the job requirements of contact centers, back office/knowledge process outsourcing, IT outsourcing, healthcare, animation and game development despite the relatively high number of higher-education graduates. And for CHEd, the limited employability of the graduates that our higher-education institutions churn out annually, or the so-called “mismatch” of their skills and capacities with industry needs.

But by 2013 Ibpap had strongly resolved to do something about the pathetic average of 7-10 hires taken in by the industry out of every 100 applicants. By 2013, too, CHEd had issued CMO No. 46, series of 2012, specifically advocating a shift in focus to learning competencies as learner outcomes and to a corresponding review and recalibration of the coordinates of Quality Assurance. The CMO linked competence to the lifelong learning discourse—i.e., the lifelong learning framework—thus broadening the meaning of the word to cover learning outcomes applied in contexts including critical thinking and the competence of scholars “to search for truth no matter where it leads.”

The vehement reactions in higher education to the paradigm shift to lifelong learning and to privileging learners and learner outcomes over teachers and learner inputs may be a mere reflection of the great divide between academe and industry. By this I mean academe’s general suspicion of industry and its pecuniary interests, as well as the fear of many academics worldwide that liberal (and transformative) education is being reconfigured to serve industry’s economic interests.

Since this suspicion has resulted, advertently or inadvertently, in disregard for industry’s rapidly changing needs, industry for its part had to consistently bewail the higher-education graduates’ lack of adequate preparation for the world of work and the mismatch between higher education and jobs. In some places, industry players have deemed it necessary to establish their own higher-education programs and institutions to meet growing needs.

Thankfully, the lifelong learning framework provides a philosophical and operational bridge between academe and industry. The rapid changes in the 21st century’s profound impact on the organization of life and work and the persistent poverty in developing nations such as ours have demanded the significant attention of education providers and educators to the issue of employability. Rapid technological changes and the corresponding need to continuously retool workers have compelled industry to pay as much, if not more, attention to learning competencies associated with a liberal or humanist education—critical thinking, problem solving, communication skills, and ethical moorings, among others.

But what competencies or human-resource qualities are needed to fulfill the other function of higher education? Put differently, what constitutes the spectrum of desired characteristics of the new corps of human resources in an evolving innovation?

At the recent Apec High-Level Policy Dialogue on Science and Technology in Higher Education, I cited among such qualities critical thinking and problem-solving skills, communication skills, adaptability and collaborative skills, which are similar to, if not the same as, what IT BPM (business process management) and other industries are looking for. These add solid disciplinal foundation, design thinking, global-thinking skills (or the ability to understand and analyze social, cultural, industrial, political and economic global forces that impact on technological innovation), research skills, improvisation and regenerative capacity, leadership skills and capacity for risk-taking.

I believe IT BPM also needs to eventually demand such competencies for certain levels of the industry, as well as contribute to honing such competencies, if it is to also produce technical and social innovations that would enable it to continuously improve and reinvent itself in the future.

Reengineering higher education so that it can serve its multiple missions in a fast-changing world for national development and global competitiveness is the challenge facing us at this time. From an education perspective, a first step is how to shift an entire system toward the orientation of honing the cognitive, functional, personal and ethical competencies of learners—or to put it in controversial language, how to shift to a learner-outcomes-based orientation at all levels, including changing the mindset of higher-education managers, the faculty and the bureaucracy.

Thinking about these challenges overwhelms, but we in CHEd will certainly not allow ourselves to be overwhelmed because we know that we can draw ideas and strength from our partners. More importantly, we know that we shall be running on the road ahead together. Together, we shall break through to global excellence in the interest offuture generations of Filipinos.

These are excerpts from the keynote address of Dr. Patricia B. Licuanan, Commission on Higher Education chair, at the industry academe-government forum “Breaking Through to Global Excellence.”