Higher Education Stakeholder Management in Supporting Out-of-School Youth: Power, Relationships, and Connection in the Philippines

• In Event: Catalyzing Higher Education Institutions for Economic and Social Change: Global Innovations in Curriculum, Pedagogy, and Community Engagement

Proposal

Out of school youth face challenges such as poverty, under or unemployment, family obligations, and other circumstances that make re-entering education and sustainable employment (Rajesekaran & Reyes, 2019). While out-of-school youth employment programs funded by donors, industry, and governments are designed to help youth gain skills needed for the labor market, higher education institutions represent an untapped resource that can contribute to OSY transitions to education and employment through their research, community engagement and training functions. However, their role in supporting out of school youth remains under explored in both academic literature and in practice. In the Philippines, EDC leads the 5-year USAID Opportunity 2.0 (USAID O2) Program which partners with 70 HEIs to strengthen the OSY ecosystem, through research, community extension, innovation development, and capacity development of local OSY-serving educational and governmental stakeholders. This paper presents research and data on the successes and challenges of engaging higher education system actors to contribute to OSY education and employment opportunities and critically examines the issues of power and stakeholder management among actors in the larger OSY ecosystem within the Philippines.
According to the Philippines Statistics Authority, the number of OSY in the country has risen to nearly 10 million youth, aged 16-24 who have not completed basic or secondary education and who generally come from low-income, indigenous, or otherwise marginalized groups. While these youth are generally not eligible to enroll in higher education institutions within the country, higher education can bridge gaps among OSY stakeholders in the Philippines while leading interventions to support youth. Based on a 2022 research led by USAID, EDC, and Accenture, the two-way relationship between the higher education sector and the OSY sector still needs to be better strengthened in order to be effective. In particular, “power” defined in this research as a factor that influences the decision-making to act on education and employment interventions for OSYs, has emerged as an important dynamic to engage the higher education sector in youth development. Specifically, the power of HEIS to inform OSY policy and practice is perceived as weak among Filipino OSY stakeholders and the power of OSYs to reach and change the Philippine higher education sector is still absent.
This presentation will describe these power-based relationships of the higher education sector to the multiple stakeholders responsible in strengthening the Philippine OSY ecosystem, namely the national government, the private sector, and the youth sector using data and evidence gathered by the USAID O2 Program. Further, this presentation puts forward recommended activities that could be explored in order to strengthen the role of HEIs in OSY development based on qualitative data gathered from HEIs, government, the private sector, and the youth.

Author

• John Carlo Pineda Fernando, Education Development Center