The rise and fall from grace of college courses in the Philippines

CAREER expectations, modern technologies, and globalization are changing the professions. Consequently, new college entrants are adapting to the shift in priorities to be able to land a decent job after graduation.

Currently available data from the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) shows that for the first semester of Academic Year 2005-2006, the nursing baccalaureate program had the highest enrollment, followed by Elementary Education, Commerce, Business Administration and Computer Science rounding out the top five. Disciplines with low enrollment included Physical Science Education, Economics Education, Literature, Voice and Clothing Technology.

The majority of the 71,000 examinees who took the annual College Admission Test of the University of the Philippines for Academic Year 2007-2008 wrote Nursing as their top choice of baccalaureate course should they qualify to enter the university. The quota course allots only 75 slots for incoming freshmen. The top ten choices of applicants for the new Academic Year were Business Administration and Accountancy, Hotel Restaurant and Institutional Management, Computer Science and Tourism.

Of course, the attraction of the Nursing profession has led to unexpected developments. A topnotcher in a recent Board Exams for Medicine went back to school to study nursing, which is a better-paying occupation in hospitals abroad. The shift of pre-medical students to the nursing course is well-documented and the invasion of students from other disciplines to Nursing has given rise to new tags like “nursing mechanics,” “nursing clerics,” even “nursing biologists.”

Tourism on the Rebound

Prof. Antonio Lazaro, secretary of Asian Institute of Tourism at UP Diliman, notes that many of freshmen applicants have a limited idea about the course. A number of them wants to become flight attendants after graduation when Tourism course seeks to provide management competence in the tourism industry.

Tourism is a recent course offering at the University of the East – Caloocan and it’s been a surprise hit among incoming college students. Chancellor Federesio Canarao thinks that based on news reports, the students appreciate the bright prospects of the tourism industry in the near future. There is also the prospect of overseas employment that are available to tourism industry professionals. There are success stories of tourism graduates who’ve gone from reservation desk clerks to managers of international hotels in Europe and East Asia.

UE at Caloocan is the University’s extension school for the CAMANAVA area, a thickly populated quadrangle comprising of Caloocan City, Malabon, Navotas and Valenzuela City. It had a student population of 6,000 during the last Academic Year 2006-2007.

Among preferred courses of incoming freshmen this year include Business Administration, ECE and Computer Engineering. Those that may be losing their appeal are the recently introduced Course on such old-school mainstays as Mechanical Engineering and Industrial Engineering.

At the margins

Overshadowed by the big splash of courses with dollar-denominated futures are college disciplines that appear out of time, or simply out of touch with the current mindset that the future lies in foreign lands. And we’re certainly not talking about Broadcast Journalism, Home Economics or Public Administration.

• Certificate Program for the Contact Center Industry. The student won’t get a coveted diploma at the end of her training but upon completion of the course, she’s primed to assume one of the best paying entry-level jobs in the Philippines. One college school even boasts that those who complete the program will earn “the attitudes and skills to handle hundreds, even thousands of people, under his supervision.”

• Bachelor of Science in E-Commerce Technology. The main competency, e-commerce, used to be a sidelight in earning a degree in Information Technology but the apparent success of Amazon, Yahoo! and eBay rescued e-commerce from potential oblivion. This time around, the course offers a full-blown Marketing curriculum anchored on computer and Internet technology. The student also gets to design and implement Web applications too. Door-to-door selling is dead; welcome the e-commerce cash cow!

• Bachelor of Science in Secretarial Administration (BSSA) major in Computer Secretarial. The four-year course revolves around a two-year non-degree program leading to a Certificate in General Computer Clerical Course and a non-degree one-year Entrepreneurial Management course. Our generation’s idea of a secretary no longer holds because graduates of this unique discipline can type shorthand, manage an office, handle meetings and conferences and do feasibility studies. Short of being an accountant, the BSSA student is the kind of super-secretary the boss in a top 500 corporation wishes to have—so he can finally kick -out the retiraeble losers he’s loathe to keep.

• Master of Science in Earthquake Engineering. Some years back, the MMDA commissioned a technical study on the impact of an earthquake on Metro Manila and one of the results is the rescue equipment resting beneath some sections of the MRT along EDSA. This masteral course may not be an offshoot of the study but it responds to “to the global need of practitioners who can handle risk assessment of structures systems and environment, design, and construction-related issues”. Well, it may look like a rocky future but the quake engineers will be around to help mitigate the aftershocks.

• Diploma in Women and Development. The graduate program provides a historical and comprehensive perspective to the study of gender and development, particularly in the context of the Philippines and the South. That it’s a man’s man’s world still rattles the distaff side so here’s one course, a specialization in the social work curriculum, that gives due attention to women’s issues in the age of high-tech.

• Bachelor of Science in Packaging Engineering. Packaging is one of the most important activities after manufacturing. It involves providing for the safe delivery of the correct product in the right container at the right time. Well, the manufacturing sector in the country has been on a decline over the past two decades so heaven forbid, packaging engineers may have few products to worry about when their time to join the labor force comes. Here’s hoping the booming call center and other service sectors will find something physical to package so these proficient techies can have a career. On second thought, the advertising industry has always been into virtual packaging so perhaps, their five-year specialization may come handy.

• Mining, Metallurgical and Materials Engineering. In most universities, Materials is interchangeable with Ceramics, apparently the visible and easily appreciated product of the integrated Course. Two decades back, this engineering course was two separate disciplines with Materials Engineering a mere subject in the general engineering curriculum. Their combination under one undergraduate course looks awesome on paper, but there may not be enough raw resources left to mine, much less raw inputs to process into metal or any useful consumer goods. NASA has a thirty-year plan for a lunar settlement so you’ll never know.