Decolonizing Aspirations: Reorienting Philippine Higher Education from Labor Export toward Sustainable Development and Critical Global Citizenship

Abstract

This study examines how Philippine higher education may reproduce labor export dependency through institutional success narratives and employability-centered educational logics, and how it may be reoriented toward sustainable development and critical global citizenship through the decolonization of aspirations. Anchored in postcolonial and decolonial theory, migration governance, the capability approach, epistemic justice, and educational inequality theory, the study proposes an integrated model linking Colonial Orientation of Higher Education, Labor Export Alignment, Employability-Centered Education Logic, Coloniality of Aspirations, Epistemic Inclusion, Capability Expansion, Sustainable Development Orientation, and Critical Global Citizenship, with Aspiration Inequality as a moderator. Using a quantitative, explanatory design, the model was tested through Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) in ADANCO based on a dataset of 400 higher education student responses. The results support seven of the eight hypothesized relationships. Colonial orientation, labor export alignment, and employability-centered logic significantly strengthen coloniality of aspirations, while epistemic inclusion significantly enhances capability expansion. Capability expansion, in turn, positively predicts both sustainable development orientation and critical global citizenship. The moderating effect of aspiration inequality was not supported. The study contributes a decolonial-capability framework for rethinking higher education in labor-exporting contexts and offers a policy-relevant pathway for aligning higher education with locally grounded development and ethically reflexive global engagement.