Skills needed not diploma

I was reading a thread on X a few days ago by a corporate CEO in Silicon Valley on what he is looking for in making new hires. He said he doesn't care about college degrees because many of those who have one do not have the skill sets he assumed they should have. So, it is what a job applicant can do to enable a company to provide the products or services they are in business for.

- BOO CHANCO

Back here at home, we are fixated on a diploma. Parents will do anything to get their children a college diploma in the hope that it will help bring them out of their hand-to-mouth existence. So, their children get the cherished diploma and then reality sets in. It is a useless piece of paper. It won't get their children decent jobs because they don't have the skills expected of them. College education, outside of a few institutions, is a scam perpetrated by people running diploma mills.

European maritime authorities have been threatening our government that they will stop authorizing the hiring of Filipino seamen because of the substandard maritime education they get from so-called maritime schools here. We have managed to delay the European threat by promising to do better. I am not updated on where we are now but for sure, we still have a lot to do to produce seamen with the world-class skills expected of them.

The results of licensing tests for nursing and teachers are also indicative of substandard education. The Commission on Higher Education or CHED was established precisely to raise standards of learning. But politics is an ever-present intrusion. A politically connected owner of a diploma mill can easily pull strings to prevent CHED from performing its duty.