Are Filipino Higher Education Students Getting Global? An Exploratory Study of a Private Higher Education in Batangas City, Philippines

This study evaluated the global competencies, skills and attitudes of the 247 first year students of the College of Business Administration in one of the private higher education institution in Batangas City, Philippines. An exploratory study through a self-constructed questionnaire assesses the manifestation of global competencies and the extent to which global skills and attitudes need improvements. Results revealed manifestations of global competencies including communicate effectively in English, wide understanding of the world, international understanding of their specialization and exhibit cross-cultural sensitivity and adaptability. Furthermore, the students affirmed the need for improvements in self-confidence, creativity, patience, flexibility, courage, interest in continuous learning, perseverance, independence, resourcefulness and self-awareness. The statistical test of difference showed that the global competency differs based on age and not on sex nor program of study. Since the identified set of global skills and attitudes are too complex, the university needs to expose their students more in the different international students’ development programs.


Introduction
Colleges and universities around the world are falling short of producing graduates equipped with global skills. For instance, according to Sparks (2015), U.S. millennials fall behind their peers in other countries in terms of global skills such as literacy, numeracy and computer-age problem-solving skills. The Philippines has a fair share of this dilemma. In the study conducted by Igarashi, Acosta, Hamanaka & Rutkowski (2017), one-third of the employers are unable to find qualified candidates for the job due to lack of requisite skills.
Interestingly, the missing skills are not academic or technical knowledge but non-cognitive or behavioural skills.
The 21st century challenges higher education institutions in producing global graduates equipped with necessary competencies, skills and attitudes. While global competence is critical, traditional teaching and learning approaches are still used in most educational institutions. For most of the colleges and universities in the Philippines, the struggle continuous with the limited technological resources. Furthermore, the inability to develop programs to allow global collaboration makes limited intercultural understanding and diversity. As English is the second language in the country, there are still issues with the use of the language among the college students.
As global students, they need to explore cultural differences. This allows them understand global complexities, challenges and issues necessary in making sound decisions outside their local comfort zones. The challenge for both the education institution and the students is to go beyond textbooks to connect and collaborate with peers and experts in the global scene. In this age and time, participation in an interconnected, complex and diverse society is no longer a luxury but a pressing necessity. Cognizant of the unique roles that schools, colleges and universities play in preparing the youth to participate in the global environment, administrators and educators alike are tasked to design tools and programs in nurturing the global skills, competence and attitudes of the young generation. However, Goodwin and Hein (2017) note that students need basic and applied knowledge, computational and creative thinking and hard and soft skills to succeed in a global world.
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As one of the pillars in producing global graduates, accreditation and international quality assurance is fast becoming a norm for private colleges and universities in the Philippines. For instance, one of the higher education institutions where the study was conducted put forward strong accreditation and international quality assurance system to produce competitive labor force in the different parts of the globe. The students are expected to possess and apply the qualities, characteristics and abilities to learn and engage himself with globally competitive issues. However, these are easier said than done.
The question remains as to the ability of the students acquire and develop global competencies throughout the course of their program. Thus, the current study was conceptualized to evaluate the global competencies, skills and attitudes of the business students. It specifically assessed the students' manifestation of global competencies and determined the extent of global skills and attitudes that need improvement. The study also tested the differences on the global competencies according to students' demographic profile.
The study is imperative in the student development programs. These are the necessary inputs for administrators and educators alike in the continuous cultivation of academic excellence.

Literature review
The role of the education system in the development of future global leaders and business leaders is increasingly getting complex as the demand for global skills and competencies change overtime. At the basic level, 21st century competencies include knowledge, skills and attitudes enabling students to meet the demands of the changing workplace demographics.

World Savvy's Global Competence Matrix
The core concepts emphasize that global competence is a journey and not an  (2013) cites the most prominent 21st century competencies found in international frameworks include critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and creativity and innovation. The importance of critical thinking is emphasized by Drake (2014) which requires students to acquire, process, interpret, rationalize, and critically analyze conflicting points to arrive at a decision that calls for a concrete action. As a common 21 st century skill, communication refers not only to the ability to communicate effectively, orally, in writing, and with a variety of digital tools but also to listening skills. Meanwhile, collaboration enables working in teams and social networking skills whereas creativity is the pursuit of new ideas while innovation is the realization of the new idea (Fullan, 2013 (2013), students must have healthy attitudes and behaviors in relation to globalization and cultural diversity. In addition, Deardorff (2009) posits that intercultural competence requires attitudes of respect, openness and curiosity. Furthermore, Orozco-Domoe (2015) argues that the global inter-culturality requires internal attitudes for development. They should gain socio-linguistic knowledge, historical perspective and geographical awareness.
Thus, teachers must provide learning experiences that shape students' attitudes towards globalization and cultural diversity.
According to Florez & Jayaram (2016), the three countries surveyed in the Latin Ark & Liebtag (2017) note that new generation of students require different skills.
A self-constructed survey questionnaire was validated by the 12 faculty members prior to the writing of the final draft. The tool has three parts: 1) demographic profile of the respondents; 2) evaluation of the student's global competencies; and 3) assessment of the global skills and attitudes.
The author personally administered the data gathering through the approval from the Dean of the College of Business Administration. The objectives of the study were clearly discussed prior to the distribution of the tool. The students were given 20 minutes to answer the survey questionnaire and it was retrieved subsequently. The tallied data were treated with frequency count and percentage, weighted mean and t-test.  and the student's need to be internationally aware (3.54 weighted mean).

Findings and Discussion
Primarily, the results indicated the respondents' strong agreement to the value of cultural differences. Through understanding other culture, they share respect while collaborating and share different opinions. The results conform to the study of Anbari (2014) that in order to achieve goals and avoid cultural misunderstandings, managers should be culturally sensitive and promote creativity and motivation through flexible leadership. In addition, significant findings focused on communication confirms Deardorff (2014) on global competence. These skills required that students need to communicate in more than one language, communicate appropriately and effectively with people from other cultures or countries, comprehend other people's thoughts, beliefs and feelings and see the world from their perspective and analyze and think critically in order to examine and evaluate relevant information.
In recognizing the value of cultural differences, most students are now trained on differing opinions enabling them accept and reject options. However, global issues require global mentality in a completely diverse paradigm. As Burnouf (2004)  Authors agree on the necessity to prepare students in a global perspective. This includes work preparation in different countries (MacCleoud, 2018) and sensitivity and adaptability to the cultures of different countries (Spitzer & Cordero-Ramon, 2013). As supported by Jawabri (2017)   The respondents' self-evaluation on the extent of global skills that they still need to improve is shown in Table 3. The nine items were all rated to a great extent. The rankings of weighted means in descending order: patience (3.40); effective written and oral communication (3.35); assessing and analyzing information (3.35); adaptability to different situation (3.28); entrepreneurship (3.27); problem solving, critical thinking, creative and At the students' level, exposure to internship and work placements are the best trainings.
Similarly, access to social media and cyberspace allows students to get free information.
However, assessing the value of the information gathered is again another challenge. With the proliferation of 'fake news' and unreliable internet sources, students are exposed to a pool of trash contents that only skilled and knowledgeable can filter.
The results, although all rated 'to a great extent', suggests that global skills are simply not as equally ranked as the other indispensable skills. Placing the value of collaboration across networks as well as leading by influence at the least suggest something on the 'employee mentality' of most, if not all, college graduates. The differing perception place on the priority and intention of the students after graduation.
The list of global attitude needing improvements is shown in  The students' regard to self-confidence directs to two possible things: the need to be globally competitive and its absence at the moment. It is relatively true that self-confidence gave one an advantage in the professional world. As Endratno (2018) proved that selfconfidence is highly significant to intentions. High self-esteem keeps them motivated to reach their intended goals. However, it is depressing that the ratings express an impending concern on students' low self-esteem as well. It is indeed reflective that students believe they need lose confidence and there is an immediate need to develop it more. Somehow, students lose sight of the global placement due to their low self-esteem.

Conclusion
This study evaluated the global competencies, skills and attitudes of the business students in one of the private higher institution in Batangas City, Philippines. Particularly it assessed the students' manifestation of global competencies, determined the extent of global skills and attitudes that need improvement and tested the differences on the global competencies according to students' demographic profile. Through an exploratory research method, a set of 247 students in the College of Business Administration made a selfassessment in a researcher-made questionnaire. Data were analysed through frequency, percentage and t-test.
Based on the students' self-assessment, their global competencies include recognition of cultural differences, appreciation of different opinions and knowledge of the English language. However, they still need to improve their patience, analysis of information and effective written and oral communication. In addition, students point to self-confidence, creativity and patience as the global attitudes that they need to develop further. The perception of the students highly differ in terms of their age.
The data clearly show an alarming reality that higher education students are not yet globally competitive. The students' self-assessment highlights major deficiencies in the competencies, skills and attitudes. The very limited international exposure of the students affect their global paradigm. It is indeed necessary to educate them on a broad view of the world through exposure to international programs and activities such as student exchange, international immersion, collaborative research and organizations and global institutional partnerships. The students might have higher technical knowledge and know-how within the context of their specialization in a local perspective. It is indeed necessary that students think of a global perspective and a much broader set of competencies, skills and attitudes.
The author suggests a further scrutiny of the issue. As this is a self-assessment, the global competencies, skills and attitudes highly differ by location and educational institution.
This could be done in several higher education institutions to further test the consistency of the results. The author also admits certain statistical limits and analysis. However, this exploratory study opens several related issues that need further assessment.
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