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Brain drain

Happy graduation! This greeted more than 400,000 graduates from both the tertiary and vocational courses this year. After graduation, they will have their diplomas laminated and displayed probably in their salas (living rooms) — intended for visitors to appreciate that a child of the parents had finished a degree.

What is wrong with this then? There is none actually. But in the system, there is, what is called systemic problem.

Imagine thousands of graduates, after long years in college, could not find jobs they trained for. And if they do, it is not related to their courses, like a physics graduate landing as a saleslady in a mall with a salary below actual needs.

So these graduates look to “abroad”. It is brain drain. Our professionals, probably the best, are forced to leave their home, their country, as their salary here is not enough to feed their families.

But that is the greener pasture, the government claims. That is why they are called “bagong bayani” or new heroes because their dollar remittances serve to temporarily bail-out the bankrupt economy. They are called heroes yet they do not receive the fitting services for their kabayanihan (heroism).

Back to the basic point: The government system persistently fails to address the plight of our professionals so they are forced to go to other countries.

A case in point is observable among our health workers and teachers.

Last Wednesday on the Philippine Daily Inquirer, the news read “RP world’s top exporter of physicians. Did you know that there is but one doctor for every 28, 493 patients in the Philippines?

Second only to India, we are also a top exporter of physicians. Some 70% of our medical graduates work abroad, to add those doctors who went as nurses and the nurses, it makes up 85% of our health practitioners are overseas.

On the other hand, the American Board for Certification of Teachers Excellence (ABCTE) claims that the United States needs 200,000 yearly or some two million new teachers in elementary and high school for the next decade.

The shortage, it claims, is due to retirement of at least 40% of its teachers in the next five years. The teacher salary ranges from US $37,000- 62,000 annually (equivalent to P1.8- 3.1 million). What an amount! You cannot have that here in the Philippines kahit makuba ka sa trabaho. ABCTE targets 500 teachers for the US in the next 12 months, as it claimed to have hired 250 Filipino teachers since 2003.

Anyone with a bachelor’s degree can go to US and undergo teacher qualification exams to earn the board certification.

Well, the above data speaks for itself. The policy is clearly brain drain. While our professionals want to stay in the Philippines, they are forced to leave because of very low salaries or lack of employment opportunities. The entry level salary of a doctor is reportedly P12,546 in government hospitals and P17,069 in private hospitals, which is too low to support a family.

The government maybe receiving remittances from these professionals that will save the economy, but the Filipino people are actually denied services from these professionals.

Aside from the low salary and lack of employment opportunities here, the courses are not well planned based on the needs of our economy. It is geared more towards the needs of industrialized countries. But with the biggest budget channeled for debt servicing instead of improving our educational system, can we have competitive graduates internationally? Ask your president. She is a mother. She should know that! #

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