Graduate education programs should address PH
development needs
MANILA, July 6 (PIA) - Philippine graduate
education system is critical to serve the country’s development goals. This was stressed in a research paper
published by state think tank Philippine Institute for Development Studies
(PIDS).
"It is necessary to determine if the
graduate education programs in the country contribute to the skills and
competencies needed in the labor market," said Mira Alexis Ofreneo, author
of the study and PIDS research consultant. Moreover, Ofreneo said that it is
important that the country’s masteral and doctoral programs are developing the
competencies needed to manage, schools, corporations, and government
organizations.
The study was carried out through the PIDS-CHED
research project “An Assessment of the State of Graduate Education Programs in
the Philippines.”
“There are 2,299 higher education institutions
(HEIs) in the Philippines, 656 of which are state universities and colleges
(SUCs) while 1,643 are private HEIs,” Ofreneo said. “A total of 647 HEIs (28
percent) offer master’s programs and 313 (14 percent) offer doctoral programs,”
she added.
“The master’s programs with the most number of
graduates are Education (27 percent), Nursing (14 percent), and Business
Administration (11 percent),” Ofreneo said. “Education Management, Public
Administration, Teaching, Management, Information Technology, Master of Arts
programs, and Public Health were the other programs that landed in the top 10,”
she added.
Meanwhile, the most widely offered doctoral
programs are Educational Management (45 percent), Education (25 percent), and
Public Administration (19 percent), Ofreneo said. “The other programs that
landed in the top 10 are Business Administration, Philosophy, Management,
Development Education, Science Education, Educational Administration, and
Business Management,” she said.
During the National Workshop on Services last
May organized by PIDS and the Department of Foreign Affairs, Dr. Tereso Tullao
of the Angelo King Institute for Economic and Business Studies, De La Salle
University, underscored in his presentation that the country still has a lot of
catching up to do to raise the competitiveness level of Philippine higher
education.
The Philippines is ranked 67th in higher
education and training and 81st in tertiary enrollment in the 2013-2014 Global
Competitiveness Report. The report assessed the competitiveness of 148
companies to provide insight into the drivers of their productivity and
prosperity.
"In relation to this, only 21.5 percent of
the more than 2,200 HEIs in the country have some form of accreditation,”
Tullao said. Only 12.7 percent of 130,000 faculty members have doctoral
degrees.
In terms of the number of Scopus-listed articles
for each ASEAN University Network (AUN) member-university, three universities
in the Philippines are identified. The University of the Philippines - Diliman
has produced 2,108, De La Salle University has 1,028, and Ateneo de Manila
University has produced 440, Tullao said.
Scopus is the largest abstract and citation
database for academic journal articles. It presently covers nearly 21,000
titles from over 5,000 publishers.
However, Tullao said these figures are measly
compared with the National University of Singapore (NUS) that has produced
74,560 documents and has the highest cumulative number of Scopus-listed
documents in the ASEAN region.
Leaders of the services sector agree that the
graduate education programs in the country should advance Philippine services
sectors in the Asia-Pacific region given that the country has vast potentials
to be the heart of services trade in the Asia Pacific.
"The country can tap its vast human
resource opportunities in the maritime, outsourcing, franchising, medical, and
educational services," said PIDS research consultant Dr. Ramonette
Serafica during the workshop.
This was supported by Ana Maria Bongato,
executive director for talent development at the IT Business Process
Association of the Philippines (IBPAP). According to Bongato, the country’s
vast potentials in the Philippine Information Technology – Business Processing
Management industry is a treasure trove waiting to be exploited. Bongato said
the country currently offers a wide range of services such as IT application,
engineering, animation, data analytics, and other business process services to
foreign firms. (PIDS/PIA-Caraga)
