‘Say it in English, please’

By Tarra Quismundo
Philippine Daily Inquirer

MANILA, Philippines—The pleas posted on the walls of the school lobby spell out the name of the game in the age of globalization: “Say it in English, please.”

A chat with a student on the STI (Systems Technology Institute) College campus at Fort Bonifacio Global City in Taguig City shows that the campaign is working.

“It is an advantage because I know that when I work, I will encounter foreigners,” says Christy Cardines, 16, speaking in flawless English, the language of global commerce.

“Most of our students are graduates of public schools and incoming first year college students have communication skills of a Grade 4 student,” says Peter Fernandez, STI chief operating officer.

“We help them adapt to the courses. What we want to do is improve their communication skills and raise their confidence level … Even the simple thing of teaching them how to use chopsticks raises their confidence,” says Elbert de Guzman, an STI vice president.

Jobs-skills mismatch

Philippine colleges have been attempting to cope with a global demand for skilled workers, mostly in healthcare and information technology (IT) amid a crisis in the basic education system.

This demand requires proficiency in English, Science and Math—something that private businesses and government are trying to raise in a basic education system that has deteriorated through the years.

Few of the graduates of the public school system are able to proceed and complete a college degree and for them facilities that offer skills training that will land them jobs are the preferred alternatives.

Today, there is a so-called jobs-skills mismatch, a phenomenon of thousands of work available with few qualified workers—nurses, caregivers, call center agents, medical transcriptionists and IT workers.

“Right now, healthcare-related courses are really big because we are looking at the potential for employment abroad. And, of course, you have the demand for engineering and technology because of changes brought about by industrialization,” says Julito Vitriolo, a deputy executive director at the Commission on Higher Education.

He also points to the rapid changes in technology that colleges barely able to keep up with.

“There is a lag time between industry development and the capabilities [developed by] the curricula. When you implement a course that was based on technology three years ago, there is already new technology. That’s why schools should have enhancement programs to bridge that difference,” said the official.

Unpatriotic policy

But for student leader Vencer Crisostomo, such market-oriented education policy—served mainly by vocational-technical schools—is unpatriotic.

“The direction of that education policy is colonialist. We are becoming slaves of the world. There’s no more sense of history, no more sense of national dignity,” says Crisostomo, national chair of the League of Filipino Students.

It’s not enough for Philippine schools to produce students who “can read, write and speak English with a twang,” he says.

“What happens to the future of those who did not graduate in college and trained for call centers and [the industry] slumps in five to 10 years?”

But the student population and parents seem to have been going with the flow in the last five years, Vitriolo says.

In nursing alone, 80,000 enrollees five years ago rose to 600,000 in 2007. While there were only 200 nursing schools in 2003, 400 were on the list by last year, he says.

Mathematics and computer sciences enrollees, most of them students of IT-related courses, accounted for 10 percent of the total 2.4 million college students. The figure was roughly the same in 1998, when IT students accounted for almost 10 percent of the 2.2 million total enrollment.

Going with the tide

Going with the trend are schools like STI, which update its courses based on industry demands, De Guzman says. The school even has a partner placement agency that do the job of “farming out” STI graduates.

Vitriolo says the country is producing properly trained workers to propel economic growth.

“It’s a healthy sign because when our economic environment is ready, we have the human resources to back that up. Other countries have the money and investments but they don’t have the people, so it’s our people who go there,” Vitriolo says.

That also means they have to speak English well.

13th June 2008 | Filed under: Campaigns | Click here to follow any responses to this entry: RSS 2.0 feed