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Thursday, April 27, 2006
Out of school, out of a job
By Mayette Q. Tabada
(First of three parts)
Study now, work never?
Depending on whose figures you want to believe, the picture of the country’s unemployed ranges from limping to depressing.
The National Statistics Office places national unemployment at 2.6 million.
The jobless number 4.8 million, contends the Ecu-menical Institute for Labor Education and Research. What are the chances of fresh graduates bloating the numbers, which represent from three to six percent of the national population?
Three-part series
Sun.Star Cebu undertook this special report to answer a question relevant not only to the workforce’s newcomers and their families, but also vital to the nation’s economy.
This three-part series will run today until Wednesday, April 26.
The first part gives two perspectives of the problem. Graduates confront a lopsided market where the demand for jobs outnumbers vacancies.
On the other hand, there is a view that the academe only churns out graduates in quantity but not the quality needed by industries. How can this mismatch be reconciled?
The second part of the special report explores in detail schemes linking academe and industries.
The features to be published on April 25 assess the gains, if any, of academic programs like industry internships and in-school job fairs, among others.
The third and final part of the special report, running on April 26, looks into efforts of government agencies and local government units to enhance the employability of public school graduates.
The special report also probes two other options pursued by those who see no end to the shrinking and tightening of local employment opportunities. Will entrepreneurship and overseas work be the miracles to end the country’s unemployment woes?
Survival and hope
College education used to be the reward culminating the struggles of Filipino parents aspiring for a secure future for their children.
It is not anymore in the present crisis where 350 lose jobs daily, according to the urban poor group Katipunan ng Damayang Mahihirap (Kadamay).
Through this journalistic enterprise, Sun.Star Cebu desires to single out to individual Filipinos as well as three critical institutions—academe, industry and government—what can be done to avert the joblessness obstructing economic recovery and blinding the desperate to all moral considerations in the struggle to survive.
It is one thing to train, specialize and compete.
When hopelessness becomes the unvarying lot of graduates, the losses spell out more than a tragic waste of diplomas.
For Bisaya stories from Cebu. Click here. (April 27, 2006 issue)
Write letter to the editor.Click here.
Join the Sun.Star message board.Click here. |
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