Decision about their college courses is one of the biggest problems of particular

graduating high school students. There are lots of factors affecting their choices. One of these

factors is the curriculum. There are students who have taken a course that didn't match with the

track they took on their secondary school as many first-year students find that their college

courses are fundamentally different from their high school courses.

According to Max Nisen(2013), Among under-matched students, some 69% didn't even

apply to a higher quality school that they're well suited to. Supporting the finding that it's not an

admissions issue, and overwhelmingly about family and personal choices, only 8% applied to a

match school, but didn't get in. When it comes to over-match, only 4% of students apply then

don't get into a well-matched school.

Mismatches are defined as the difference between a student's place on the ability

spectrum based on testing, and the percentile of their school on a quality index.

In "almost all cases," mismatch doesn't come from the admissions side, but from the

choices that students and their parents make. Less wealthy students aren't informed about their

options and bow to financial constraints, and more frequently end up under-matched and at lower

quality schools. Better-informed and wealthier students, along with those who go to better high

schools end up at higher quality schools and don't under-match, but are much more likely to

over-match. They seem to think that the benefits of better quality schools outweigh the potential

costs of flunking out or underperforming.

students and families than of admissions offices, argue the researchers, Eleanor W. Dillon, an

assistant professor of economics at Arizona State University, and Jeffrey A. Smith, a professor of

economics at the University of Michigan. Financial constraints, among other factors, tended to

spur undermatching, they found: Students from wealthier families were less likely to have

undermatched. Beyond financial constraints, not being close to a well-matched public institution

and more time off between high school and college correlated with undermatching, the study

found. Information was also a factor: Having a lot of information about college or role models

who had gone to college reduced the probability of undermatching. Parental education was

trickier, the paper found: Students with parents at both ends of the spectrum were less likely to

undermatch and more likely to overmatch.

According to Eric TWUM AMPOFO(2015), Individuals’ ambitions are considered

important because they might influence key choices, and outcomes such as educational

achievement (Goodman & Gregg, 2010). In fact, many studies suggest that young people with

higher educational ambitions have greater motivation and higher educational attainment than

their peers (Desforges & Abouchaar, 2003). For example, Blaver (2010) examines Hispanic

young people and finds that self-reported competence in maths was associated with future

educational ambitions, and also with maths performance. In fact, the relationship between

educational outcomes and academic ambitions seems to be a complex one. Ambition thus, can

both be a predictor of educational achievement and an outcome of it, and might be influenced by

self-efficacy, personal traits, experiences and mediating family factors (Gutman & Akerman,

2008), or linked to beliefs about ability (Phillipson & Phillipson, 2007).

inherent in humans and this moves us to become attached to and feel affiliated to others. Indeed,

the need for affiliation is based on genetics or experience (Ryan, 2000). Castrogiovanni (2002)

defines peer group as a small group of similar age, fairly close friends, sharing the same

activities. In general, peer groups or cliques have two to twelve members, with an average of five

or six. Peer influence therefore is defined as when people of your own age encourage or urge you

to do something or to keep from doing something else, no matter if you personally want to do it

or not (Ryan, 2000). Indeed, it involves changing one’s behaviour to meet the perceived

expectations of others (Burns & Darling, 2002).

Stakeholders, educators and parents always harbor the idea that peer groups provide a

variety of positive experiences for adolescents. Boujlaleb (2006) alleges in a study that peers

have a more powerful influence on adolescents as compared to families. Indeed, according to

Haynie (2002), adolescents get their self-esteem from the group they are belonging to and they

cannot imagine themselves outside the gathering. Carman and Zhang (2008) in their study

indicate that the adolescents who have a high level of conformity to unconventional peer

behavior tend to have lower GPA than those who have lower level of conformity. Tope (2011) in

his study, however asserts that peer group could either positively or negatively influences the

academic performance in school.

Many students believe that they succeed for a variety of reasons, and their beliefs and interests

are very important in determining how they deal with failure, the risks they are willing to take,

and the ways in which they interact with new opportunities. It is without doubt that the academic
achievement of students depends on number of basic factors of which effort is paramount (Tella

& Tella, 2010).

According to the research of Millersville University of Pennsylvania(2016), For many

students this is the first time they experience high degrees of autonomy.

Most have never lived away from home for an extended time, and are now overwhelmed

with the autonomy they experience in everyday activities. They don’t have curfews to

adhere and may have difficulty managing their time to satisfy both academic and social

activities. Some students may experiment with drugs or alcohol or may engage in other

risk-taking behaviors such as sexual promiscuity. Many freshmen make poor choices

that affect their academic performance. For example, many courses don’t have

attendance policies and some students see this lack of accountability as a reason for

skipping class. In an environment where students are offered unlimited autonomy,

many students are not able to make responsible decisions that will have positive

outcomes.

According to CONOR FRIEDERSDORF(2015), Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia

drew outraged criticism for declaring that “there are those who contend that it does not benefit

African-Americans to get them into the University of Texas where they do not do well, as

opposed to having them go to a less advanced school, a slower-track school where they do well.”

Scalia was clumsily alluding to “mismatch theory,” a prominent critique of affirmative action. Its

proponents argue that non-academic preferences in college admissions ill-serve some intended

beneficiaries, who end up admitted to schools for which they are relatively unprepared, and
struggling, rather than thriving at different schools where they would be at least as well prepared

as their classmates.

According to the research of the Faculty of St. Vincent’s Academy, Lent et al. (1994)

developed SCCT to facilitate understanding of career choice, interest, and performance

processes. This theory identifies the factors that interplay when a student chooses a certain track

and progresses on the chosen career path. Moreover, it provides a framework on using social

cognitive processes to explain success and failure, academic outcomes, and career outcomes.

According to the research of The Faculty of St. Vincent’s Academy(2018), Like a recent

New York Times opted by Jedidah Isler. Isler condemned mismatch-thesis proponents by

highlighting her own success in a Harvard Ph.D. physics program. But the point she tried to

make was undermined by her note that she began her academic career at Norfolk State, a

historically black college. And Isler is typical of black students who get doctorates in the STEM

fields. A 2011 National Institutes of Health study found that “the nation’s top 10 producers of

undergraduates who go on to earn doctorates in science and engineering are historically black

colleges.” In a more supportive environment, black students gain the background and academic

maturity that enable them to compete.

The City University of New York, exemplifies the benefits when many capable black students

attend a nonselective school that is more consistent with their entering academic skills. Its

Minority Access to Research Careers program has been quite effective in providing needed

support and mentoring to these students.

By contrast, if they had gone to more selective colleges, most would have been unable to

compete when immediately thrust into very demanding freshmen science and calculus classes.
The CUNY pipeline program serves this purpose for students in the humanities and social

sciences, giving them the research training and mentoring that prepare them for doctoral

programs. Many successful students who don’t attend selective colleges, particularly in the

STEM areas, often have some difficulties in adjusting to life in doctoral programs since they

must compete with students who had completed stronger undergraduate programs.

According to Eleanor Wiske Dillon (2013), Bowen and Bok’s (1998) finding of no

apparent impact of on degree completion for the overmatched students in the “College and

Beyond” data

suggested to us that these students might find other ways to deal with better-prepared colleagues

and a high pressure environment. For example, they might follow the increasingly common path

of increased time-to-degree, as highlighted in Bound, Lovenheim and Turner (2010). Or they

might follow scholarship athletes at some colleges in taking easy courses and completing easy

majors, as suggested in journalistic exposés such as Steeg et al. (2008) and Ann Arbor News

(2008). Or they might transfer to another school that represents a better match. This version of

the paper examines degree completion and transfer outcomes; future versions will also examine

time-to-degree and major choice within broadly defined categories, as well as earnings.

Our

According to the Paul Joshua Sinalan(2013), most of the schools only offer 1 to 2 tracks

for a reason of lack of facilities and the deficiency of specialized and well-trained teachers. The

variation of the owned tracks of a particular school may affect the students on having their track.

In fact, the students who have financial state issues usually choose the state-supported schools to

in. If that so, the students choose affordability more than their wants. They will have that
complex situation for they'll be prepared to a course which they don't have the desire to. It's not

easy for a student to blend where he supposedly isn’t belonging.

According to RhoderickAbellanosa (2018), after the long wait is over the graduates of

K-12 each university in the Philippines are prepared and ready. As a matter of fact, all of them

are at their best: flowcharts, frameworks, and jargons. They all claim with unwavering faith that

their universities prepare these incoming students to be globally competitive for 21 st century

education. Education in the whole country should be a system and as such it must operate in

coordination with each other in the light of a much bigger blueprint. Unfortunately, some

universities may have been prepared for the incoming academic year, others have not, and the

whole educational system in higher education is not.

There are universities that strictly require students to take a bridging program before

pursuing their chosen course. For example, there is a STEM student who would like to enroll in

Accounting would be required to take at least 12 units of additional courses in college. This is to

address the student’s non-alignment to the preferred college degree program. Unfortunately, this

is not a standard policy among universities and colleges. Although, there are certain schools and

universities that trust and rely on the student’s score in entrance exam. If an applicant or student

passed their exam, that student is eligible for admission to the university regardless of strand

alignment. In fact, there is a medical school that admits an ABM student graduate without asking

the student to take up bridging subjects in biology or chemistry.

According to the Philippine Basic Education(2018) There are bridging programs in the

United States, but these are different from the ones that are now appearing in colleges in the
Philippines. In Coldwater High School in Michigan, for example, the "bridging program" is an

option for students to earn college credits in high school. The "bridging program" in the

Philippines is more like a set of remedial courses. In some cases, these remedial courses are

given only over a few weeks. The National Union of Students of the Philippines (NUSP)

expresses grave concern over the Bridging Program required for the first wave of Senior High

School (SHS) graduates that entered tertiary education this school year. The said program is for

students who took SHS strands that are “mismatched” with their current tertiary education

course. They are required to take additional subjects in order to “demonstrate the competencies”

required of a graduate of a strand aligned with the course.

In the Polytechnic University of the Philippines (PUP), students under the Bridging

Program are required to finish two additional subjects over two years just to be considered

qualified to take their college course, while also taking the same subjects as students who do not

have to take the Bridging Program.

In the University of the East (UE), the Bridging Program requires students to take

General Education subjects first during the regular school year, and then enroll in their major

subjects during the summer

break.

Part of the senior high school curriculum is the work immersion or OJT program which

aims to give students the needed “skills and competencies” for work. But employers are

concerned that this is not enough, hence their reluctance to hire senior high school graduates.

Students are actually further exploited as they are required to render their services or their labor
for free and, for private senior high school students, they have to pay school fees even if they are

out of their schools for their OJTs. In technical vocational tracks, they are required to cover

internship hours in factories, only to be rejected after they graduate.

According to League of Filipino Students (2018), they slammed the Duterte

administration’s implementation of the bridging program among K-12 graduates, particularly

those currently pursuing a college degree. Part of the K-12 program’s failed promises are higher

quality of education and continuing education in tertiary educational institutions. After its two

years of implementation, a glaring number of high school dropouts and out-of-school youth have

proven that the K-12 program is nothing but a hamstrung solution shoved down into the throats

of Filipino students, teachers, and parents. The students are right to say that they’ve been

experimented on – because that’s exactly what the K-12 program is: a useless experiment which

desperately failed to solve education’s ills.

According to the League of Filipino Students(2018), This program is set to be

implemented in order to require senior high school students having “mismatched curriculum”

with that of the course or program they plan to take in college. Those who have also failed or

deemed as “not fully-equipped” with their needed subjects in college are required to take

additional two years for certain subjects. This is despite the fact that most public senior high

schools do not offer much options for the students in choosing their tracks; hence, they are

pushed to enroll in private high schools.