ASEAN Integration, why the hell an issue for Student Leaders?

36^th PACSA Keynote Speech by Dr. Vicente K. Fabella

Problems are considered as challenges in ASEAN Integration. The heart of Dr. Vicente K. Fabella’s Keynote Speech dwelt more with the trends, tenets and competencies amidst the ‘challenges’ and not about ‘problems. He started his speech by enumerating the countries included in ASEAN, we have in the list, the Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, Myanmar and et cetera.

ASEAN will have one vision, one identity and will be one community. Dr. Fabella presented 3 relative ASEAN trends which refer to a set of behavioural skills and technical competencies to become effective in the real world. These trends are Initiative, Communication Skills and Critical Thinking.

INITIATIVE. We must never be satisfied with the status quo and must always go beyond the minimum.

COMMUNICATION SKILLS. The Ability to confidently express ideas and opinions in both oral and written communication in the English Language. It might demand time and effort but what makes perfect is practice.

CRITICAL THINKING. The ability to solve problems with the possible best solution in an orderly manner.

These trends are presented in a smart video presentation. It definitely stimulates my schema for it really existed in my past experiences as a student leader. I have always forwarded encouragement to my fellow leaders to become team players and to have initiative, commitment and creativity. I honestly hate myself for not being an effective leader, perhaps, towards my subordinates. Only to find out that this concern is a universal apprehension.

Another set of trend, being presented is about the conventional hypothesis that whenever you get high grades or graduate with flying colours, you will be eventually paid with high salary. But, he expounded with several evidences and graphs that employability is not about grade only. A chart has been presented and it shows that there is no significant difference with graduates who have high grades and graduates who unfortunately sucked in terms of their starting salary. Excellent Academic Performance is not a guarantee for high salaries. Though, we have always known that it has an implication to our outputs. This has been discussed to say that it is not just about grades but also about the said trends presented in the earlier paragraphs. We must also involve ourselves in community activities.

ACADEME-INDUSTRY LINKAGES

When we talk about linkages, we are actually talking about quality relationships. Just like any other relationships, some have bad relationships and some have good relationships. Eventually, good ones will yield great results. In the Philippine Setting, it started with Enrolment, followed by Building Skills and Finding a Job.

ENROLMENT is a concern of the students in its completion of a course and quest for a suitable course that aligned to a respective discipline.

BUILDING SKILLS is a concern of the faculty in its pedagogy and curriculum.

FINDING A JOB is a concern of Business individuals in its matchmaking of jobs with available courses.

The emerging problem of this process is that only teachers and business people talk a lot, not including the creative minds of the students or the youth. The communication must include all the elements of the said process.

Then, he went back talking about Initiative which is directly relevant to confidence. Most of the graduates sucked in this particular trend. Why it matters to student leaders? Because initiative is one of the high concepts of leadership. Then, Dr. Fabella shared to us a quotation by John Quincy Adams, ‘If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.’ This will matter because everything related to these trends start at school.