THE dynamic Naga College Foundation (NCF) President Mario Villanueva invited me as commencement speaker at one of the biggest private schools in the Bicol region and the first to set up artificial intelligence labs.

More than 2,300 students graduated from NCF’s graduate school and several colleges this year. It had to split the graduation rites into two batches.

Dr. Dennis Layug, president of East West International Educational Specialists (Ewies), made Batch 2 cry, and I made Batch 1 laugh.

On the eve of my NCF talk, I read in the June 25 issue of The Economist an article, “Students are doing worse than you think.” The Economist reported, “First-year undergraduates are increasingly arriving without the basic skills they need to succeed. At the campus in Berkeley, some 20-30 percent of students taking an early calculus course turn up displaying ‘severe preparation deficits.’ The challenge has become so great that instructors are having to reteach middle-school mathematics.”

Some academics noted that “the number of first-year students entering with math skills below high school level had increased nearly thirtyfold in five years, to almost one in eight. Some 70 percent of the lagging students were not performing at the level expected of a 14-year-old.”

The Philippine situation is not better off. During the pandemic, Filipino students experienced learning poverty and did poorly in the 2018-2022 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) tests. The government also implemented mass promotion.

I remember in 2011, I wrote at the Philippine Daily Inquirer about a nagging question, “Why waste your time in college.” I said, “... James Altucher of Formula Capital had a controversial but often practical theory — that sending kids to college is a bad idea.”

I continued: “A US report based on the book, Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses, said that after two years of college, 45 percent of students learned little to nothing. After four years, 36 percent of students learned almost nothing.

“I also have a running survey with new entrants into the workplace. I have been asking young people for over a decade now how many percent of what they learned in school is applied in their present job.

“Funny, but the average response I get is roughly 15 percent. Does this mean that almost 85 percent of what is taught in schools and paid for with parents’ hard-earned money is useless? And to think that the poor parents and students are hopeful that education could take them out of poverty through a decent job?”

In the United States, the cost of college education has probably risen steadily to 20 times the rate of inflation and much faster than health care costs. Total student loans are probably larger than the aggregate credit card debts.

More prohibitive

I guess that the cost of college education in the Philippines, especially in private higher education institutions (HEIs), is becoming more prohibitive. This is the differentiating factor for NCF — world-class but affordable education for Filipinos, especially in classes C, D, and E.

In many schools, students from poor families are serious about their studies. Others take it easy, don’t study their lessons well, cannot think critically, heavily rely on AI, and view college as an ordinary rite of passage.

Altucher had better ideas for people who don’t want to go to college — “start a business, work for a charity, travel the world, create art, master a sport, write a book, make people laugh, or master a game.”

One doesn’t need a college degree to excel in these. There’s no BS in

Minecraft, Roblox, or Counter-Strike 2. But you’d need a college degree if you’re cut for corporate slavery.

If you’ve just graduated from college, congratulations — and I hope you get a decent job soon. If you’re about to enter college, think first of what you want to be. If you believe a college education is necessary to realize your dream, by all means, enroll.

In the Philippines, employers prefer college graduates to senior high finishers for entry-level jobs, simply because there are over a million jobless college graduates in the country.

Top industry leaders say they “hire for attitude and skills,” not for a degree or diploma. In fact, the Philippine degree or diploma is not honored in other countries.

Dr. Layug and I were discussing future possibilities in global education. For Philippine education to be more globally competitive, we need to overhaul the system to allow students to get what I call “education on demand” — in the same way that consumers choose what ingredients and how much of them to put into the salad they buy.

Dr. Layug suggests a cost-effective way to educate Filipinos — industry-specific technical-vocational training, micro-credentials, diploma courses, online transnational courses, and NCF college degree, a five-in-one curriculum compressed in three years.

Our advocacy can only happen if Philippine education authorities focus more on enabling rather than regulating Philippine education in a changing world, and stop being enamored with maintaining the status quo that worked decades ago when they were once students in a highly regimented system.

My advice: “Never let schooling interfere with education!”

Ernie Cecilia is chairman of the human capital committee and the publications committee of the American Chamber of Commerce of the Philippines; chairman of the Employers Confederation of the Philippines’ TWG on labor policy and social issues; and past president of the People Management Association of the Philippines (PMAP). He can be reached at erniececilia@gmail.com