New website provides students info on choosing courses, employment opportunities

MANILA, Philippines - To help address the jobs mismatch in the country, the Philippine Business for Education (PBEd) will launch a website that will provide students information about employment opportunities and which courses can lead to them.

FutureYou.ph will serve as an online career exploration portal that will provide users easy access to complete and relevant higher education information.

PBEd President Chito Salazar said the website would bridge the “information gap” that causes the mismatch in the current placement of graduates and the job requirements of industry.

He noted that the mismatch is one of the reasons why the Philippines has the highest unemployment rate in Southeast Asia.

“People are entering the wrong jobs because they are not aware what jobs are out there,” Salazar said on Wednesday in a press briefing in Makati.

“What we do is bridge the information gap and provide parents information so they can make the best decision for their children,” he added.

FutureYou.ph can guide students in choosing their career path by showing which jobs are in demand per industry. It will also offer basic information on schools including degree programs, performance on licensure exams and information on different industry careers, and tuition rates.

The website has 150 schools, four industries and 44 professions in its database but PBed plans to expand it by forming partnerships with the academe and businesses.

It will also contain a blog providing career advice, video interviews of professionals, and a career quiz for those who are still undecided about what course to take in college. The website will be launched formally on September 23 at the University of Makati.  

The Philippines’ unemployment rate stood at 7.3 percent last year, the highest in Southeast Asia, according to the International Labor Organization’s Global Employment Trends of 2013.

Based on data from the Commission on Higher Education, the most popular courses by enrollment are business administration, medical and allied sciences, education science and teacher training, engineering and technology and information technology.

A recent study by the Labor department, however, showed that the top in-demand priority courses are agriculture and related fields, engineering, science and math, health sciences, information technology and higher education.

The mismatch occurs when there are industries that offer jobs but have no applicants or when there are too many applicants in an industry that does not have the capacity to absorb them.

FutureYou.ph is a joint project of PBEd and United States Agency for International Development- Philippines and is part of the Higher Education and Productivity Project, a three-year initiative that seeks to improve post-secondary education through industry-academe partnerships.