The proposed “Three-Year College Education (3CE) Act” is part of the very well-intentioned attempts to address the mismatch between what the Philippine educational system is producing and the actual human resource needs of industry and other work places. This mismatch is especially glaring those sectors that require technical skills-intensive manpower, such as in the construction, public utilities, infrastructure, mining, manufacturing, and agritech sectors. Human resource specialists usually trace this mismatch to the misplaced priority given by parents and their children to pursuing courses that lead to a college diploma, instead of enrolling in TESDA-type technical schools that will prepare them to be skilled carpenters, plumbers, mechanics, masons, electricians, hospitality and health workers.  This obsession with college diplomas got special attention when President BBM, in his second State of the Nation Address (SONA) recommended a review of the K to 12 program in order to channel more of our Filipino youth towards TESDA-type of training as opposed to pursuing college degrees which, more often than not, do not equip them with the knowledge and skills required by the labor force market.  This is evidenced by the high rated of unemployment and especially of underemployment of college degree holders.

            In my view, the solution to this shortage of technical workers will not be found in tinkering with the college curricula, especially considering the low quality of learning which at present our youth are getting from their basic education program, as reflected in the poor performances of Filipino youth in international academic achievement tests.  As can be gleaned from ChatGPT sources, Filipino 15-year-olds who participated in the Programme for International Student Assessment 2022 scored well below the OECD average.  In Math, they scored 355 vs.  OECD average of 472; Reading 347 vs. 476; Science: 356 vs. 485.    Out of 81 countries, the Philippines placed around 76^th in math; 79^th in reading; and 80^th in science.  Only 16% of test-takers reached Level 2 proficiency in math, with around 24% in reading and 23 % in science—meaning over 75 % fell below baseline proficiency in all domains.  DepEd interprets the overall gap (about 120 points behind average) to mean Filipino students are roughly 5 to 6 years behind their peers internationally in terms of learning progress.

            In the field of creative thinking, which is essential to knowledge-intensive professions that require a college education, the Philippines ranked 63 out of 64 countries, with an average score of 14, just one point above Albania.  The OECD average was 33.  In the first-ever PISA creative thinking assessment performed by PISA, Filipino students scored the lowest in generating original and effective solutions, particularly across domains like written and visual expression problem-solving.  At least in the next ten years, during which higher investments in education may be able to address the poor quality of our high school graduates, college preparation for the knowledge-intensive professions must include as much general or liberal arts education subjects in order help  bring our future professionals to international standards.

            In the meantime, in order to solve the problem of shortages of skilled workers that are the products of the TESDA-type technical schools, we just have to do a better job of convincing parents and their children to follow the TESDA-track in the Senior High School program and to encourage many more private educational institutions to emulate such model technical schools run by the Don Bosco priests and foundations like the Meralco Foundation Institute, Dualtech, CITE, Punlaan, Dagatan Agritech School , NYK-TDG Training Institute for ship officers and others that have been successfully turning out world-class technical workers, a good number of whom are working abroad.

            As some industry and trade associations are actively promoting, effective short-term solutions to the shortage of some skills needed by our growing economy (one of the fastest in the Indo-Pacific region together with India and Vietnam) include short courses or microcredentials that will upskill, reskill or retool those among our millions of employed, underemployed or unemployed workers so that they can fill in the gaps in our labor force.  There is a very healthy trend of companies, both large and medium-scale, partnering with schools in providing on-the-job training opportunities to students enrolled especially in TESDA-type schools. This school-industry partnership has been perfected in the German-inspired “Dualvoc” system which combines classroom work with on-the-job experience.  All these practical solutions will leave intact the curricula of college courses preparing our future medical doctors, lawyers, architects, engineers, physical and social scientists.

            Also to be commended are efforts, especially in the IT-BPM sector to offer upskilling courses for their current workers to ensure that the rapid improvement in digital technology, especially as regards AI, will not make them technically obsolete.  The leaders of the IT-BPM  industry which earns close to 10 % of GDP, for example, are acutely aware that AI can take the place of their workers in the call or customer service centers.  To avoid the massive unemployment to which this trend can lead, the Association is sponsoring upskilling, reskilling and retooling programs to upgrade call center agents to be able to perform more knowledge-intensive work, such as those in animation, medical transcription, legal documentation and other tasks that require more critical thinking and creative skills and less repetitive tasks.  Also to be commended are the efforts of the Analytics and Artificial Intelligence Association of the Philippines to implement a nationwide AI upskilling program.  Working with CHED and TESDA, the Association will start in January 2026 a five-tiered upskilling program to address the needs of beginners to professionals in the field of Artificial Intelligence.

            We should separate the solutions to short-term shortages of certain types of human resources from the long-term challenge of producing world-class knowledge workers which can only be achieved by designing our college or undergraduate programs in such a way that the critical, creative and communication skills that cannot be fully developed  during the Senior Year High School portion of the K to 12 curriculum can still be addressed during the first two years of the college course leading to a professional or knowledge-intensive career.

            To end this series of articles, let me demonstrate that I am not alone in criticizing the Senate Bill entitled “Three-Year College Education Act (3CE)”.  Let me quote from two seasoned college professors who actually argued for a deeper core curriculum at the college level.  Inez Ponce de Leon, professor at the School of Education of the Ateneo University—with a long history of producing world class professionals in numerous fields—combined her and another educator’s opinion about 3CE.  I quote from a column written by Ms. De Leon in a leading daily:  “Ana Cristina Tuazon’s column last week was a nuanced critique of recent attempts at shortening the college curriculum by removing liberal arts subjects….As Tuazon said:  ‘Our students lack many competences, which can point to inadequate training in basic education—a problem that isn’t solved by assuming that college classes are redundant!

            “Without strong, repeated training in writing, public speaking, reading, listening, mathematics, science, physical activity, and logic, our students will merely be compliant workhorses, unable to think for themselves or worse, afraid to have their voices heard.”

            I can surmise that college professors like Ms. Tuazon and Ms. Ponce de Leon represent a large sector of all of us who have grappled for decades with the problem of preparing the Filipino youth for the various professional fields in which they have to compete with their colleagues from other countries.  There is a consensus that, instead of reducing the liberal arts subjects in the college curriculum, we should actually “deepen” the preparation for a professional career by offering more and better delivered subjects in the liberal arts.  To be continued.