EDITORIAL – Where to Batch 2015?

The country once again turns over thousands of college and technical-vocational graduates. These graduates move on to become a part of the country’s pool of human resources. As valuable as these young men and women are to the human resources available for industries to tap into their education as well as tech-vocational skills, they also become additionational figures to thr growing statistics of unemployment.
This has always been the tragic part of graduation–the spectre of being lost into the world of job seekers racing for the meager jobs in the labor market. Most often, these graduates end up in a job mismatch. For example, not a few nursing graduates end up working as call center agent. That’s because the jobs readilu available here are those in the BPO industry.
During the graduation ceremonies of the Ateneo de Davao Universitt, Fr. Joel Tabora, S.J., the university president, emphasized transcendence to the school’s over 1,600 graduates. Transcendence, according to Fr. Tabora, meant moving on in life after school not just seeking employment but seeking the end of poverty. How? He said Ateneans are educated to become leaders, to be employers and to provide jobs for the poor.
It’s a word filled with optimism and responsibility. It’s a challenge the graduates of 2015 will have to face, overcoming the bondage of labor mismatch and unemployment, overcoming poverty and hunger, and overcoming mediocrity in the midst of the highly competitive world that is evolving into more and more seamless with global economy levelling its ground for all.
To the members of Batch 2015, it’s time to transcend.