ABSTRACT
This descriptive-qualitative determined the experiences of education graduates working in other industries and its implication to Teacher Education Institutions during the school year 2023-2024. The study, utilizing in-depth interview, found out that education graduates working with other industries are young male and female workers who have less work experience with the industry. Most of them are graduates of Bachelor of Elementary Education and are earning much compared to new teachers in the Department of Education. All education graduates working with the industry are going home right after their work duties. The study revealed that education graduates working in other industries experienced making the job easy and manageable, making adjustment, and offering unique perspective. On the other hand, the challenges encountered by education graduates working in other industries included insufficient knowledge of the new work, culture shock, and adjustment to new environment. They managed these challenges through attending training and seminars, showing resilience, and managing their time.
Keywords: Experiences, Education Graduates, Industries, Implications, Teacher Education Institutions
INTRODUCTION
Background of the Study
The study focused on the experiences of the Education graduates working in other industries. It is through education and proper training that one may get a job after graduation. Education is formal schooling before the first job. Many educators will attest to the effectiveness of learning if the students are able to apply them in everyday living. There is a very strong competition of having a job after graduation.
In Hills, Robertson, Walker, Adey, and Nixon (2003) as cited in de Guzman and de Castro (2008), a role of the higher education sector is to supply suitably skilled graduates to the workplace. (de Guzman and de Castro et al. 2008)
In most cases, students will enroll in any higher institution to gain and acquire new knowledge and skills that is applicable in the workplace. The responsibility of University/College in training students is not limited to imparting academic skills. The development of employability skills in teacher education institutions requires members of the academe to have informed knowledge of current industry practice and an awareness of how different workplaces are structured and function. Teaching skills, as well as knowledge, means that faculty members are required to move beyond traditional lecturing and use a range of teaching methods (Commonwealth of Australia, 2007).
Among other professions, several investigations have identified that teacher education skills and competencies are transferable to other non-teaching careers. Communication, the ability to work independently, and the training of others the useful competencies in obtaining other employment (Martin, 2006). Several transferable teaching skills are identified that are beneficial to non-teaching jobs like the willingness to learn and listen, and other skills such as complex problem-solving, coordination, critical thinking, mentoring, and decision-making. In addition, managing time, monitoring, multi-tasking, negotiating, speaking, understanding individuality, analyzing and evaluating systems, reading, and writing skills, and being service-oriented are the competencies usable in other non-teaching careers.
State Universities and Colleges (SUCs) offer free tertiary education through the Republic Act 10931 or the “Universal Access to Quality Tertiary Education Act” which was signed into law in August 2017 by President Rodrigo Duterte. Underprivileged Filipino students are given opportunities to pursue college degrees through free tuition and other fees enrolled in SUCs. The government spent a budget for 1. 6 M Filipino students for their free tertiary education to meet the demands of human resources in the country (Rocamoro, 2021). Unfortunately, not all graduates landed a job related to their completed program. This is also true in teacher education wherein a significant portion of government investments are wasted as reflected in low performance in the licensure examination and some education students after their graduation leaving the profession and switching to other careers (Abulon et.al, 2014).
Tracing teacher education graduates who are working not aligned to the completed program is uncommon for educational institutions because of institutional and program assessments that require alignment of the program completed to the present work of graduates. For this reason, the researcher would like to hear the stories of teacher education graduates who are successful in their non-teaching jobs outside education like office staff, BPO employee, police officers, etc. This study would like to ponder the phenomenon of choosing non-teaching jobs among teacher education graduates. Specifically, it aims to discover the core competencies learned from the university beneficial in their present employment and unveil the reasons, thoughts, and feelings for choosing non-teaching careers.
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