Editorial 16(1) 2005-06 VOL 16 NO 1
EDITOR’S NOTE: The editorial of the 2005 Scientia issue lamented the ongoing scarcity of jobs in the country for college graduates, accounting fellow scientists who either resorted to applying for jobs wherein they are overqualified such as call center agencies or left for other countries that provide better opportunities. Thirteen years after its publication, the same story still unfolds: for scientists; the lack of industries in the country means substantially lesser to no opportunities for them to fully utilize their specialization, and the “brain gain” initiative Balik Scientist Program of the Department of Science and Technology fails to attract overseas Filipino scientists whose research requires state-of-the-art technology. Add to this the exploitation of workers (in the science sector or not) through contractualization, an insulting minimum wage (e.g. NutriAsia), and the displacement of workers in order to secure the targeted profit quota of companies and/or to avoid labor executive orders of regularizing employees (e.g. PLDT).
FOR THE STUDENT, four to five years of back-breaking struggle to obtain a Bachelor of Science (BS) degree in any of the courses offered by the CS serves as good training for whatever line of work he/she may end up in upon graduation. Tongue in cheek, the CS has yet to cover considerable ground in terms of advancing its facilities and equipment (read: lack of funding). This makes even the most routine of procedures in better funded institutions laborious if not altogether impossible here. In order to persevere in these constrained and difficult conditions, students are taught earlier on the value of adaptability. Wherever scarcity abounds, resourcefulness is a cardinal virtue. This resourcefulness provides the students of the college with an invaluable tool which may help them in whatever endeavor they may immerse themselves in following their graduation from the University. The present socio-economic situation presents itself as an ideal application of this ‘adapt or die’ rhetoric. In the face of widespread unemployment, fresh graduates fishing for placements continually find that the problem of finding the job has to take a backseat to finding a job. It is not uncommon to find overqualified college graduates working in what in other countries are high-school graduate-level jobs. This current administration prides itself at having created thousands of new jobs. To be fair, it is a noteworthy cause anywhere in the world for a government to actively work towards the alleviation of unemployment for its people. As a matter of fact, it is an integral part of its mandate to govern. Job outsourcing by international companies has opened a new niche for prospective job-seekers in the form of such places as the call center. For the most part, the jobs offered in these places require little prior work experience and neither do these require any degree in particular. At face value it may seem like these jobs are the panaceas, the cure-alls of the country’s unemployment woes; however
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SCIENTIA VOL 25 NO 2
