Addressing Skills Shortage in the Philippines

The Philippines, even though a 3rd world country, slowly and trying to cope up with the fast technological change. Yes we are far beyond on what are the technological advancements rich countries like Japan and U.S.A, but we filipinos have the capability to compete with them in terms of skills and our ability lo learn. Our country also slowly becoming as one of the Information Technology hub in Southeast Asia together with Malaysia and Singapore. A new trend in business that we called outsourcing or Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) has become the most famous in our country. Some companies in the United States outsourced in our country because of the low cost of business here and filipinos has the capability to engaged with such jobs. Because of the very fast growth in the field of ICT, the Philippines right now is facing skills shortage on this field. In a study conducted by XMG, a global ICT research and advisory tank, “the total ICT growth in the Philippines which is projected to grow by 30 to 35% FTE year-on-year through 2010”.” But the country's IT labor pool average growth for the past 5 years is only 10% and is forecast to grow by another 3% in the next 2 to 3 years,”. This is the current shortage status of the country as far as the ICT field is concern. How are we going to solve the problem of skill shortage? Here are some of the strategies the government had implemented and must implement to solve the increasing number of skills shortage in the country.


Improvement of the education system specially in State Universities and Colleges

the government implemented some changes in the curriculum of some universities and colleges through its ladderized curriculum program headed by the Commission on Higher Education (CHED). With this program, students could acquire the needed skills needed by the industry.
The government must also increase the subsidy of every State Universities and Colleges (SUC's) for them to provide state of the art facilities to their students. This has been the major problem of state universities and colleges throughout the country.
The government must also limit the increase of matriculation of private schools to have an increase of enrolling students. Increasing the no. of students could solve the skills shortage in the country.

Provide training institutions in technological fields at low to no cost

TESDA offers some technical courses to students at a low cost and also in a short period of time. This training are the best alternative for those who cannot afford to go to universities. But the no. of training institutions in the country is still not enough to produced the needed labor pool in the field of ICT and technology.

Industry-Academe Mismatch

this is the problem that needs to be solve first. There is a mismatch on what the academic sector produced to what the industry needs. According to XMG analyst Benedict Dormitorio, “ensuring curriculum alignment of educational institutions with the current market needs of the industry through close consultation with ICT companies and organizations is very important”. The graduates produced by the academe is useless if it doesn't match on what the industry demands. An example of this is strengthening partnership of industry and academe in offering On the Job Training (OJT) program for the students to acquire skills that industry needs.

Government Should promote Technology Courses

the government must also encourage incoming college students to enroll to what are the in demand courses like IT or Computer Science to increase the number of expected graduates.

Wage Increase

majority of the fresh graduates on this field migrated to neighboring countries like Singapore, Middle East, India, China and Malaysia because of low wage. The government must increase the current wage rate in the country to convince our graduates to stay in the country.

Reference:


http://www.infoworld.com/news/feeds/08/04/04/Critical-skills-in-the-Philippines-face-shortage.html