The graduates of the private collegiate system

The graduates of 2014 will be marching soon. My focus today is on the private tertiary educational system.

“Statistics.” About three million students are enrolled in the tertiary educational sector every year. The Philippine Yearbook of Statistics in 2011 states that for the academic year 2009-2010 a total of 2.7 million students were enrolled at the tertiary level.

Nearly a million among these, or 35 percent, were studying in state-supported institutions. Thus, 65 percent of all collegiate level enrolment is in private educational institutions.

“By their fruit, you shall know them.” Not all graduates at the collegiate level schools take state-run professional licensure examinations. But those who do take a professions competency test, experience high failure rates. They are a small part of the graduates.

To cite official statistics, for instance, in 2010: of the 0.41 million who took these exams from 6,872 schools, the passing rate was only 33.8 percent.

More details are known for specific state examinations. There are at least 45 sets of licensure examinations conducted by the state to enable official accreditation of qualified professionals.

Of 71,342 who took the licensure for elementary school teachers from graduates of 1,263 schools, only 17.7 percent passed. Of 12,988 examinees for certified public accountants from 427 schools, 45.1 percent passed, indicating a better quality of the state of schools in this field. Of 8,049 examinees for civil engineers from 229 schools, 39.0 percent passed. The average passing mark for examinees for the bar was 20 percent in 2010.

How specific schools perform is not tracked although the government and school authorities can know these. Information on schools with high passers when the results of the licensure exams are released gets flashed publicly when such exams are released.

When the high passers come from the private sector, the outstanding feats of the graduates provide bragging points for the private schools through public advertising and press releases.

In general, however, the graduates from private schools account for the disastrous casualties in these licensure exams. Many graduates would not and could not even dare to take these exams.

“Poor quality output.” Simple inference from these numbers indicates that the quality of the output of tertiary educational institutions is not encouraging. Indeed, it is most depressing.

Of course, there are good schools and outstanding students. These are the exceptions from the rule concerning the average output of the whole system.

The nation is far from fulfilling the state’s announced goal of providing quality education for its citizens, in this case at the tertiary level.

Yet, even a poor output is likely to have a saving grace. Schooling could help enhance anyone’s functional literacy, no matter how grossly deficient is the acquired learning for the practice of a profession.

“Partial relief of government burden.” The setbacks notwithstanding, there is some gain derived with the presence of an active private educational sector at the tertiary level.

Among many developing countries, our country is unique on this account. For a great number, the provision of college level education is a function of the public sector.

For all these countries, the usual international comparison of public spending on education (in this case tertiary education) can be misleading. In our case, the private tertiary education serves as substitute service for what might have been the public sector’s role. The spending that arises from private support of tertiary education is not reflected in these data.

Among the five original ASEAN countries – Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand – ours is the lowest public spending per head on tertiary education. What this actually tells is that our total spending on tertiary education in our country is grossly under-reported in such statistics.

Even as I say this, though, there is a strong case to make for higher public spending on tertiary education in our country. I am underscoring an under-appreciated fact that the private tertiary educational sector reaches a wider range of educational demand of the citizenry.

“The unemployment rate and school enrolment.” Another noteworthy point is the impact of further schooling on the unemployment statistics. With more young adults occupied in school, there are fewer unemployed (and underemployed).

How or why is that? In the Philippine definition, persons who are at least 15 years old who are without work and are actively seeking work are unemployed. If they are in school, however, they get subtracted from the labor force unemployment statistics.

Granted that there are some working students in school, the mirage effect of the reduction of the ranks of the unemployed still happens.

Just imagine the swell in the unemployment numbers if the two million students in the private colleges and universities were not otherwise enrolled.

In recent years, the total unemployed laborers stood in the vicinity of three million workers, sometimes accounting for seven to eight percent of the labor force. Even if only one million of these students were fully added to the unemployed, the absolute unemployed balloons to four million! – Just like that!

“Reform of higher education: the CHED.” The private educational system grew during American colonial times. After political independence, this expansion continued unabated.

In 1994, the government created the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) under Republic Act 7722. Thus, the development and supervision of higher educational institutions in the country was transferred from the Department of Education to a commission type governing body.

The CHED’s mandate is large. It has within its means some proper tools to influence the governance of the schools. To do its job properly, it is given the proper tools to regulate.

After almost two decades of existence, new developments in higher education, problems of poor quality continues to plague the regulators.

In 2011, the CHED, in presenting its program of improvement of the tertiary educational sector, described the state of the higher educational landscape as “chaotic … characterized by too many higher educational institutions and programs, job-skills mismatches, oversubscribed and undersubscribed programs, deteriorating quality, and limited access to higher quality education.” –Gerardo P. Sicat (The Philippine Star)

(To be continued next week)