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by Philipina A. Marcelo
I've been thinking about students who work part-time in Call Centers here in Metro-Manila. They work at night and then attend lectures and lab classes during the day - some of them, attend tough Programs, such as Chemical Engineering even! And as I watch some of them zombie their way to school, it makes me wonder... when do they get to sleep? When the going gets tough and they're confronted with a choice between a College degree and keeping their lucrative jobs in the Call Center that feed them and their usually financially struggling families, the choice is usually painful for us, educators - they drop out of school. There are some who brave the towering task and continue attending school... and they usually get hammered
by the tough demands of their Academic Programs, too. And how can they hope to survive when even full-time students struggle to meet the tough demands of their Programs? And "softening" those demands will weaken the value of the education, the very same "prize", that they are working so hard for, and therefore, that is not even an option - shouldn't be an option. I was almost ready to curse that "lure of the big money" in those Call Centers that, I usually think, rob the Philippines's Science and Technology sector with would-be talents. And then I found this article on New York Times....
Hmmm... so, those kids, as they struggled to juggle their Call Center jobs and the tough demands of school in the hope of reaping the promise of a better life for themselves and their family, are actually contributing significantly to the Philippine economy? And yet, there's not much help out there for them to ensure their success in getting a college degree. Is that fair?
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My suggestion... if I could be allowed to suggest something, how about scrapping the old-fashioned "block sectioning" that is still adopted in many universities? Block sections, especially in the majoring/specialization years, leave the students very little options - it's either they take the morning session or the afternoon session... and that's just about it. Therefore, students who work part-time have very little hope of taking courses required in their Academic Program that match their work schedule, too. This situation is mostly true in private Universities where students try to go to, despite the higher tuition fees, to avail the top-notch education that they seek. And yet, the "unfriendly" block section system makes it hard - close to impossibility - for them to juggle work and school. And when they're not able to enroll the full load of a "regular" student in a block section, they are tagged "irregular" - a stigma that doesn't help their plight - and they are destined to spend longer time in the University, mostly joining "petitioned classes", which are more expensive for them... and most of them are the ones who struggle financially, too!
Is it hard to remedy this? I don't think so... in fact, I think that this is the whole point of having on-line enrollment - let the computers sort out the schedule puzzle for the students. It's just a matter of making them, computers, do their job that way... otherwise, what's the point of computerization when the enrollment system is still as limited as manual enrollment? Then "computerized" would just be some fancy term, and their operation an added expense - with very little added benefits - for the students! "Modenization" and "progress" are empty words unless they actually worked, y'see!
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