Skills needed not diploma

I was reading a thread on X a few days ago by a corporate CEO in Silicon Valley on what he is looking for in making new hires. He said he doesn’t care about college degrees because many of those who have one do not have the skill sets he assumed they should have. So, it is what a job applicant can do to enable a company to provide the products or services they are in business for.

Back here at home, we are fixated on a diploma. Parents will do anything to get their children a college diploma in the hope that it will help bring them out of their hand-to-mouth existence. So, their children get the cherished diploma and then reality sets in. It is a useless piece of paper. It won’t get their children decent jobs because they don’t have the skills expected of them. College education, outside of a few institutions, is a scam perpetrated by people running diploma mills.

European maritime authorities have been threatening our government that they will stop authorizing the hiring of Filipino seamen because of the substandard maritime education they get from so-called maritime schools here. We have managed to delay the European threat by promising to do better. I am not updated on where we are now but for sure, we still have a lot to do to produce seamen with the world-class skills expected of them.

The results of licensing tests for nursing and teachers are also indicative of substandard education. The Commission on Higher Education or CHED was established precisely to raise standards of learning. But politics is an ever-present intrusion. A politically connected owner of a diploma mill can easily pull strings to prevent CHED from performing its duty.

But the world has become more competitive. Jobseekers must have the right skills, never mind the diploma, to be employed. Our call centers are always looking for job applicants to hire. But they can only hire one out of 10 that they interview. They are not looking for college graduates but those who can express themselves well in English and have basic skills needed to perform the tasks they are supposed to do.

What happens to the nine other applicants who failed their first job interview? Maybe two or three will be taken in to get some training to make them good enough to hire because our call centers are desperate for staff. The rest will probably run for Congress under a party-list, the only job available where qualifications and basic skills are not required.

In a recent conference led by PIDS, the government think-tank, Professor Andreas Schleicher from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) outlined key global trends reshaping work, such as climate change, artificial intelligence and demographic shifts. These factors, he noted, are not only creating new opportunities but also posing significant challenges for education systems worldwide.

“Routine tasks are disappearing, replaced by technology-intensive roles. This world no longer rewards what you know, but what you can do with what you know,” Schleicher said. Using data from the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) assessments, he stressed that education systems must evolve to prepare students with both technical skills and essential soft skills, including problem-solving and creative skills and emotional resilience.

Those are the exact points the folks in our BPO industry have been telling me for a while now. Technical skills are expected but soft skills that will reveal how a job applicant will interact with a BPO client is just as important. Critical thinking and problem-solving skills are important. Being able to speak good English is required but unfortunately, we are losing that ability quite fast. Neighbors like Vietnam may soon overtake us in this area.

Dr. Michael Alba of the Far Eastern University Public Policy Center discussed the Philippine’s unique demographic dividend – the opportunity presented by a low ratio of dependents to working-age individuals, signifying a young and expanding workforce. “The demographic dividend presents a one-time opportunity for the Philippines to transition from a middle-income to a high-income nation,” he said. He cautioned that this advantage could be wasted without effective education reforms and workforce alignment.

This was what I have also been saying in this column for years. We are wasting this demographic dividend because we failed to invest in our youth being able to get quality education that will enable them to get the good jobs available today. The entry level jobs at BPOs are being gobbled up by Artificial Intelligence.

I am afraid even the jobs requiring brawn in construction may not be as plentiful. Technology is also making basic human labor obsolete. In China, they managed to build a 10-story apartment building in just over a day using factory-made steel buildings. The building process resembles that of building cars: streamlined production, high quality and low cost.

Dr. Winston Conrad Padojinog, president of the University of Asia and the Pacific, focused on more immediate concerns. “We must not lose sight of immediate economic demands,” Padojinog said, emphasizing the need to address current skills shortages while preparing the workforce for future challenges. He pointed out that sectors such as construction, healthcare and digital services require urgent attention. He advocated for targeted interventions to upskill and reskill the current workforce, expand access to technical and vocational training and strengthen partnerships between academia and industry.

Indeed, CHED must raise the standards of higher education and coordinate with industry on the skills they require for employment. It makes no sense to graduate thousands of students who studied courses to become nurses or teachers, only to realize that their diploma is a useless piece of paper. Our young people must get the skills they paid schools to get and CHED should guarantee that they will.

Boo Chanco’s email address is [email protected]. Follow him on X @boochanco.