While the local telecommunications sector prospered, the dot com industry went bust. Soon, the IT and computer courses got replaced by call center training programs and care giver courses. It is cool to study either of these two. Again, there is the promise of high pay and immeasurable benefits.

Will the promise be broken?

If the Microsoft Varsity Program succeeds, then the answer could be yes.

"Not enough people are going into IT. There is no way we are going to get the 16, 17 year olds excited unless we create something," noted Kurt Messersmith, Developer Platform Evangelist (DPE) Regional Program Manager, Microsoft (Asia Pacific Region),

At the recent launch of the Microsoft Varsity Program, he told the attendees, "We need people like you to get them interested. We encourage you to get people excited about it. We need your help to create learning communities."

He added, "Software companies are not hiring because the students (graduate) just don’t have enough skills."

Thus, at the Microsoft Varsity Program (MS Varsity) launch held at the Microsoft Philippines headquarters in Makati City, university organizations and education industry experts pledged to team up and work with various Department of Education institutions and other academic units to improve the Philippine Educational System.

The MS Varsity is a multi-phase endeavor that aims to create student ambassadors that will become educators and trainers in several schools that need their assistance. The program seeks to foster learning and development through the integration of Information and Communications Technology in education, too.

The initial stage of the program will be implemented by tapping 75 outstanding university and college organizations within the National Capital Region to be part of the program. The schools will then be represented by one ambassador to the team. Industry practitioners will train these would be envoys of knowledge in three aspects, namely: Technical, business, and education.

"Microsoft Philippines advocates cross-discipline learning: That is why we are integrating three different tracks in this program. MS Varsity seeks to develop ambassadors as advocates of goodwill through teaching and helping people discover their potentials," said Sam Jacoba, Microsoft Philippines’ director for academic affairs.

During the second stage of the program, the students will be trained to cascade their knowledge to other institutions in the most efficient and successful manner. When the ambassadors progress to the third and final phase, they become part of the Partners in Learning Program. This is a Microsoft global initiative which aims to enable a worldwide community of lifelong learners realize their full potential through technology.

"Microsoft Varsity is not only a way of developing our country’s future leaders to be ambassadors. We are also providing them with an ideal setting where they can interact with their fellow students from other schools and organizations. This is a chance for them to learn best practices and actual experiences from the other participating organizations," said JV Wong, Microsoft Varsity Program Lead, and president and trainer of People Ignite Organizational Development and Training, Inc., an implementing partner in this program.