INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION
By Roger Bartholomew

Roger Bartholomew spends his life talking with students - both as a teacher and as a counselor. His position as president of International Education Specialists, Chairman of Southville Foreign University and Director/Teacher at Southville International School all involve listening to students and parents and advising them on their studies and careers. He is a frequent speaker in schools, colleges, universities, public forums and focus groups. He can be reached at rogerb@inter-ed.com.

WHAT STUDENTS WANT TO STUDY

Part of my job as a student counselor is to find out what are the trends and popular courses that students think will give fulfilling careers and well-paid jobs. I feed this information back to my principals who then look at the courses their institutions offer and see if they are a good match.

On September 15th & 16th this year, the 20th Career Counseling & Guidance Fair was held in Manila at the PICC (The Forum). More than 40 colleges and universities showcased their course offerings, some of these from overseas. Nearly 8,000 high school students from 184 high schools poured into the event to find out what and where they should be studying. The following week, a similar event was held in Tagaytay for students from the Calabarzon Region.

Thanks to the wonders and sophistication of IT systems and Databases, and sponsorship by JobsDB.com, we were able to capture data of what students were looking for at the exhibit and what career areas they were considering. Not many had thought about studying overseas, but when they heard about the opportunities for work and migration after finishing studies, interest started rising.

The statistics that I am about to share with you have never previously been tabulated in any meaningful form, so this is a first for JobsDB, you and me in finding out what our high school students want to do. The sample used was 5,000 student responses all given without any pressure or prompting.

There were several surprises: Nursing only just made it into the Top 10; the most popular course is usually not a degree program (and note that most of the students were from up-market, private high schools); courses leading to a professional license were only prominent in three areas; girls outnumbered boys 54 – 46%; many of the most popular courses are not available from the traditional universities.

Anyway, enough dangling the carrot! This is the list with my comments:

1st – Culinary Arts. This had twice the demand of the second place subject. Interest was split fairly evenly between cuisine and baking/pastry

2nd – Business. This includes seven majors but excludes Accounting

3rd – Accounting. Close behind business. If you add Accounting to Business it almost equals the numbers for Culinary Arts.

4th – Engineering. All disciplines including the most popular (Computer Eng), which is not a licensed subject.

5th – IT. And if we add Software Eng. this would be more popular than Engineering.

6th – Nursing – a far cry from its No. 1 status 3 years ago.

7th – Psychology. Always a favorite (like business) for those who don’t really know what to do!

8th – Graphic Design. Hardly surprising but took a long time to get there.

9th – Digital Arts. Definitely a sign of things to come.

10th – Hotel & Restaurant Management. Just squeezing in with 3.15% of inquiries.

It would appear that Culinary Arts are the flavor of the year (pun intended) and that there is a perception of reward, fulfillment, stability, well-paid employment, not to mention an expanding stomach! Being a cook or chef is a tough job, but it definitely opens the door of opportunity. If you are seriously bored at this point you might want to click on http://www.inter-ed.com/cgi-bin/news/details.asp?news_id=49 and have a look at an article I posted two weeks ago using some information sourced from Reuters.

Cooks & chefs with work experience and communication skills (i.e. English) are seriously in demand; Filipinos are the most treasured because of their good work ethic. If this is something you are interested in for a career change or for the opportunity to migrate or work overseas, drop me an e-mail on ccpc@inter-ed.com and I may be able to help you with some useful information.

I am going to jump No. 2 as many of the students in this category will want to put up their own businesses – and good luck to them and I wish them every success. Just remember that a 100 hour week is the norm for successful business people.

No. 3 is Accounting. In today’s world of financial regulation, accountants are in enormous demand all around the world (except maybe in AIG, Lehman Brothers, XYZ Bank, etc.) and if you are licensed, the world is your oyster. But…….accounting is not that easy and really good accountants are few and far between - and are VERY well paid. This is not a profession for the brainless! But again, if this specialized aspect of business excites you and passing the board exams is a thing of the past, drop me an e-mail at ccpc@inter-ed.com . So the students are quite savvy. They are aiming for courses that definitely lead to good positions, both here and abroad, but unfortunately most of them have not really checked out whether they have the aptitude and ability to handle such careers; hence the point of the exhibit and trying to align national/international HR requirements with college courses.

Next month I will discuss some of the other categories, but it was interesting to note that the overseas schools which came to the exhibit all had a focus within those top ten courses. There was (for me) one major disappointment though: hardly anybody wanted to take up Education, so I guess the next generation will have to learn on-the-job or from the Simpsons on TV!