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Monday, May 01, 2006
Editorial: Herculean labor
JOSE ROY Awin Jr. tipped the scales at over 100 kilos a year ago when he applied and was accepted as a maritime scholar.
Like his 75 batch mates and other scholars of the Norwegian Shipowners Association (NSA), Roy followed a punishing regimen at his campus in the University of Cebu-Mambaling Maritime Education and Training Center (METC).
For the first three months, he was incommunicado to the world beyond his dormitory, classrooms and laboratories. Tactical officer and dorm master Nelson Opon said first year students are not allowed to go out of the campus, receive letters or visitors, and have a mobile phone. It is a preview of a seafarer’s life.
For the first time in his 18 years, Roy, an only son, was cut off from his mother in Ormoc City. He woke up at 5 a.m. to exercise on the grounds, and stayed up till past 9 p.m., studying to maintain at least a grade of 2 in all his subjects. He shared his quarters with nine other boys, washing and ironing his uniforms. Even their shoes followed a certain order on the racks: black leathers above, rubber shoes below.
Before the first week of the first month was over, two freshmen dropped out, both males, both crying for their mothers.
Roy prevailed. Taking now his summer load preparatory to his second year, he is a lean and confident 72 kilos. While he credits the school and his mates for sustaining him, he says his real motivation is to help his mother. “A lot of things hang on my education,” he tells Sun.Star Cebu.
Fittest first
For realizing this while still an undergraduate, Roy may have a head start over the 24,000 new graduates that Central Visayas schools regurgitated last March to join the race for jobs, according to the Commission on Higher Education 7.
Last April 24, 25 and 26, Sun.Star Cebu ran its three-part special report, “Out of school, out of a job.” College education is a serious matter from any perspective.
For graduates and their families, college diplomas shield them from the unemployment suspending 200,000 in jobless limbo in Central Visayas, according to January 2006 estimates of the National Statistics Office 7.
For industries, an overhaul of curricula, training of teachers and improvement of tie-ups with academe are needed so that employers find the workforce they need.
For the nation, the generation of jobs, matching of academe and industry needs, and training of entrepreneurs will uplift economic depression and staunch the exodus of the country’s best and brightest for oversea employment.
For these paramount goals, what needs to be done?
Subvert the old
The special report showed that demand is high in the services and manufacturing sectors. According to the Department of Labor and Employment, Cebu’s “economic drivers” are still call centers, business process outsourcing, hotels and restaurants, and semiconductor manufacturing.
To qualify for openings, job seekers must communicate well in English, be skilled in using computers, and creative in solving problems. These are value-added attributes enhancing basic criteria on character, academic background, and work attitude.
Sun.Star Cebu’s special report stressed that institutional linkages will ensure that graduates’ quantity and quality meet the requirements of industry. Existing tie-ups attest to improvements in facilities, faculty, curriculum, practicum, training, industry exposure, and hiring.
For instance, academic institutions with the Dual Training System lead to nearly 100-percent hiring. Industry-funded scholarships and apprenticeships, like the METC-NSA cooperation, are successful enrolment-employment programs.
Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is evident when schools cooperate with labor and employment agencies to generate job opportunities and to protect graduates from illegal recruitment. Companies can also demonstrate CSR by standardizing their apprenticeship and internship programs, in cooperation with local universities.
Business management schools contribute to nation-building when their graduates are intensively trained and motivated to become entrepreneurs. For generating jobs and investing in human potential, entrepreneurs perform a critical social function in today’s society.
The brain drain is said to be the legacy of self-interest that regards education as a security blanket for families, as an exploitable resource for diploma mills and bureaucrats. It need not be that way, the special report exhorts.
For Bisaya stories from Cebu. Click here. (May 1, 2006 issue)
Write letter to the editor.Click here.
Join the Sun.Star message board.Click here.
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