Data from the Philippines’ Department of Education (DepEd) and Commission on Higher Education (CheEd) showed that there are three million students who are graduating this year, some 500,000 are college graduates and barely half of the total graduates get jobs immediately after graduation.
The apparent reason observed, is that college graduates’ skills do not match with the available job vacancies. The Philippine government Department of Labor and Employment (DoLE) expressed concern that many of the graduates do not satisfy what the industry needs.
According to DoLE, local as well as overseas employers continue to grumble over lack of employable graduates in spite of job vacancies. Many of the graduates are either not ready for the jobs or they don’t possess the needed skills and knowledge relevant to the work they applied for.
This year and onwards it shall be expected that about 97 percent of the job available are in the cyber services like for instance: call center, information technology and sales.
To address the problem of job mismatch, the government labor agency has launched a “Job Fit” project. Their objective is to identify the needed skills usually demanded by future employers.
The project also intends to address not only the perennial job and skill mismatch but also the youth unemployment status all over the country as well.
Moreover, the project shall serve as a guide to the education sector to formulate an appropriate curricula and provide the necessary skill training needed for the newly graduates as demanded by the industry.
It has also looked upon into the role of guidance counselors in all schools all over the country, that they can primarily be instrumental in educating the students by outlining of what are the needed skill and knowledge that they can be able to use in their respective chosen endeavor in order to increase their chances of landing a job after they have graduated from college.
