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Employable Skills of Information Technology Graduates in the Philippines: Do Industry Practitioners and Educators have the Same View?

Published: 06 May 2016 Publication History

Abstract

Although there are plenty of Information Technology graduates, only a small portion of them are considered employable. The Philippine government, together with higher education institutions, is doing their best efforts to reduce the gap in the workforce. It has been mandated by the local governing body in the Philippines that universities and colleges must have industry partnership in order to balance theory and practice in the curriculum. Despite this straightforward solution, very few studies have been conducted in the Philippines to determine if the curriculum sufficiently addresses the needs of the industry. Toward this gap, this present study was conceived. Data gathered from 44 academics and 44 IT practitioners revealed that IT skills got the highest median rank among the skills. However, none of the 10 identified skills (7 soft skills and 3 general IT skills) had a median of first or second rank. Both set of respondents gave the same ranking on all the skills except on problem solving skills. IT practitioners gave a higher rank in importance on problem solving skill than those of the academics. It was worth noting that all identified skills were addressed in the current curriculum -- an indication that the curriculum was responsive to the needs of the industry. Recommendations for further research were also presented.

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    cover image ACM Other conferences
    WCCCE '16: Proceedings of the 21st Western Canadian Conference on Computing Education
    May 2016
    137 pages
    ISBN:9781450343558
    DOI:10.1145/2910925
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    Published: 06 May 2016

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    Author Tags

    1. Critical thinking skills
    2. IT curriculum
    3. IT graduates
    4. employability
    5. problem-solving skills

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    • (2024)Employability Skills in Computer Science, Interior Design, and Graphic Design2024 ASU International Conference in Emerging Technologies for Sustainability and Intelligent Systems (ICETSIS)10.1109/ICETSIS61505.2024.10459373(375-380)Online publication date: 28-Jan-2024
    • (2023)Acquired Skills of Graduates of a Local Philippine University and its Relevance to Their Present Job: A Tracer SurveyDiversitas Journal10.48017/dj.v8i3.26448:3Online publication date: 3-Jul-2023
    • (2023)An E-Collaboration Application for Final-Year Project ManagementInternational Journal of e-Collaboration10.4018/IJeC.31578719:1(1-17)Online publication date: 6-Jan-2023
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    • (2018)Predicting Employability Skills among Information Technology Graduates of Philippine State University in their On-the-Job Training using J48 AlgorithmIndian Journal of Science and Technology10.17485/ijst/2018/v11i37/13084211:37(1-6)Online publication date: 1-Oct-2018

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