When you ever come to the Philippines, you will notice that young people take great pride in their education. You will see a great number of private colleges and universities, run by Catholics or private entities basing their education on Christian values.
Since the 1980's, there has been a perception that taking a certain educational course can get you further ahead in life than others, and this namely is so because in the Philippines, wages are very low compared to the wages in western countries, or even in some of the other Asian neighbours of the Philippines.
A field that is particularly very popular these days is Nursing. It's for many students a passport to get a job overseas, especially in the United States of America. Also, in other countries, like Ireland, England or Austrialia.
In a given moment of a year, there are about 100,000 nursing students graduating but only about half pass their final exam. In the 70's, only a handful of nursing students were enrolling nursing courses but since many people like to leave the Philippines, many students now see a light at the end of the tunnel for a better future, so they think, enrolling in nursing will get them a ticket for a better life abroad.
I think, there're already too many students who follow up nursing these days and there's already too much competition going on for the few local hospitals who will hire them here, and in the case of looking for a nursing job abroad, one must complete and pass another exam so he or she will be accustomed to the standards of nursing in other countries, like the US.
Parents spend lots of money on their children for them to finish up nursing in the Philippines, in the hundreds of thousands of pesos if not close to a million pesos for their education.
Although, when a nurse has passed all exams, local and foreign, she or he must be hired and most of the foreign hospitals will hire an experienced nurse first before they will hire a nurse that does not have any practical experience, so it's very difficult for a just out-of-school nurse to get a job abroad.
Picture: This is a graduation of a February 2007 class of nurses. Only 49% passed their final exam and what you see, the amount of nurses are only half of the 49%, the other half will come in the afternoon for their graduation to accept their degree. The 51% are not there, as they did not pass the final exam, but can retry another time. Can you imagine, if 100% passes, how many nurses will you see in the Philippines. There're just not enough local hospitals for them to find a job, much less going abroad. So, you can see, much unemployment in the Philippines.
