Today April 2, 2012 more or less 1,600 MSU-IIT students just graduated which possibly a considerable percentage of this new graduates will be adding themselves to the 8.5 million unemployed Filipinos, according to Jeffrey Ryan Malonda JobsDB, Philippines this afternoon, during the 3rd MSU-IIT Employers Forum held at the University Mini Theatre. The forum was organized by the Association of IIT Alumni Foundation Inc., (AIITAFI) headed by the President Prof. Darwin J. Manubag. During the forum, the President of the People Management Association of the Philippines (PMAP) was tasked to present the Suggestions and Observations on How to Strengthen the University Graduates’ Chances of Landing Better Job,” of which she said that most of the MSU-IIT graduates has deficiency on the following:
Writing Skills.Referring to the ability of the new graduates to effectively sell themselves to the employer by just reading their resumes. According to her, most of the graduates of MSU-IIT would find it hard to express oneself through writing which is crucial because this is one of the most company needs.
Interviewing Skills. This refers to the ability of the students to effectively and confidently communicate and interact using the English language. Most of the MSU-IIT graduates find it hard to express themselves. They lack self confidence which is vital during job interviews. They lack confidence to assert and express their thoughts.
Social Skills. IITians lacks the ability to readily adapt to peers and productively work with co-workers and colleagues. MSU-IIT students are not effective in terms of working with peers, not a team player.
Basic Skills. Refers to the basic skills one should have in order to be qualified for a certain job.
The University Officials was given the chance to respond. Dr. Ignacio pointed out that it’s really hard to polished a very raw inputs compared to UP’s pre-polished inputs. This would mean that students of MSU-IIT came from the different poor provinces of Mindanao and the Visayas who have come to MSU-IIT with high expectations of learning. While other Luzon University students are nurtured along with their tutors and piles of encyclopedia prior to enrolling. Judging the disparity, MSU-IIT is actually doing the best if that would be the case, since it produces competitive graduates. In fact, MSU-IIT consistently remains as one of the Top Ten Universities in the Philippines, despite its short existence of 40 years in the academe compared to UP, Ateneo, De La Salle who have been at the academe for more than 100 years. Professor Nora Clar, the Dean of the College of Arts and Social Sciences (CASS), responded by saying that she is surprised to hear it first time that the graduates of MSU-IIT are lacking confidence. All these years, she said that she always thought that MSU-IIT students are confident if not over confident. Since, communication skills is one of the identified problem of the graduates, of which her college (CASS) would be in question since it is in this college where English is taught. She asserted that it is not the sole responsibility of the English Department of CASS to teach the students, but of all the faculty of the University.
What serves to be the wake-up call for everyone during the event was the statement made by a certain company representative. As everyone are pre-occupied with the thought of finding possible working solutions for the laid-down problems. This guy went into the podium and said a statement that made everyone open-mouthed. In my own understanding the backbone of his statement is that “Professors or the University itself should not be comparing the MSU-IIT students with other students of the other Universities. The mere idea of telling the students that UP are better students than IIT for example, gives a “pre-conditioning effect” to the students of MSU-IIT of which psychologically the effect, MSU-IIT students will have the feeling of inferiority. In other words “labeling” the students of UP to be better than MSU-IIT students would erode the self-esteem and self confidence of the MSU-IIT students to the extent that when a student of MSU-IIT who graduated with flying colors when put around with UP people, the IIT graduate will generally feel small and inferior. He added that what MSU-IIT student’s needs are encouragement and further motivation. This can be done by positive reinforcement motivation such as using words of complements when the student excel. Another, is the question on "how the university deal with students who failed in some of their academic subjects" of which in my own thought the University were not able to fully address this, knowing the fact that for quite sometime a number of students had committed suicide after getting a failure grades in Mathematics.
The said forum was jam packed with company representatives specifically Human Resource teams coming from the different company all over Philippines who were hoping to hire and welcome fresh graduates from the setMindanao State University-Iligan Institute of Technology Job Fair 2012, which will happen tomorrow at the University Gymnasium. Present at the event also were the present Chancellor of MSU-IIT, Dr. Sukarno Tanggol, the Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs Dr. Edgar W. Ignacio, the Vice Chancellor for Administration and Finance Dr. Polaus M. Bari, the Deans, faculty and staff of the different Colleges of the University. Seen at the event were representatives from Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) Iligan who made an announcement that a job portal will be open to operate and serve the Filipino citizen soon and the Public Employment Services Offices (PESO) Iligan.
In conclusion, with all my expectations I pray that what was discussed in the said forum will be taken by the MSU-IIT management to gauge its strategy to provide responsive learning with regards to the fast pacing changes of the current labor industry in our country. The future of the workforce depends on how the academe molds its students. The employer and university partnership should be forged and strengthened to foster easy employment of the graduates of Mindanao State University-Iligan Institute of Technology.
&appId;
&appId;