State U (1)

DO YOU know where you have to go to take the following majors: BS Geography, Master of Tropical Landscape Architecture, MS in Health Informatics,  Master of and MS Medical Anthropology, Diploma (as well as MA/MS, PhD) in Archaeology,  Diploma or MS in Bioethics, MS Genetic Counseling,  MA Women and Development? Those are degree programs that are offered locally only by the University of the Philippines.

I am not boasting here or glorifying UP. I love UP but my colleagues know I am one of the most critical when it comes to UP braggadocio. I complain about UP faculty and students being mayabang (arrogant).  I didn’t like the “Ang galing mo UP!” (’You’re so good, UP!”) slogan during the UP centennial, and I am constantly warning my colleagues that we rest too much on past glory and achievements, and need to work harder to expand our horizons for the future.

Yet, in the last two weeks the Inquirer has published letters from two readers, Pat D. Gonzalo and Jordeene Lagare, claiming, in so many words, that I was discriminating against other universities in the Philippines.

Both letter-writers, in fairness, were gracious, so I was almost reluctant to write a rejoinder. But on Monday as I attended a meeting of deans and institute directors at UP Diliman and as we reviewed our dismal shrinking budget from the government, I thought to myself, hey, maybe it’s time I used my column to talk more about what UP does.

I do write from time to time about UP, but these are articles about sunsets and sunflowers and fire trees on the Diliman campus rather than about what we do, much less our achievements. If there was a spate of articles about UP in April and May, it was because I wanted to share commencement speeches I delivered at various campuses, but the speeches were less about UP than about being Filipino (or, in the case of the UP Cebu speech, about being Bisaya).

Opportunities

Gonzalo’s letter was the first to be published. He took issue with my mentioning that after seeing so many working-class parents at these graduation ceremonies, I had become more convinced about looking for ways to get more Filipinos into UP. Why UP, he asked, especially when you consider the crooks we produced in government?

I did mention, with shame, the alumni crooks in my UP Tacloban speech, but I retain my position about extending opportunities to more students to get into UP.  When students are unable to get into UP they are deprived of learning opportunities that are not available in other local educational institutions.

The fact remains that the UP system offers the widest range of degree programs among educational institutions in the Philippines. The ones I named at the beginning of this article are only a few of those unique degree programs which I am aware of. The Diliman campus alone has 66 degree programs. The College of Music has one of the most exciting diversity of programs, with certificate and diploma courses, besides BA, MA and PhD programs, for everything from composition to music education, from voice to dance, as well as specializations for particular music instruments.

But there’s more to UP than unique subjects and degree programs. UP was founded on principles of liberal education, which means students are not restricted by any religious or secular ideology. This means that even for courses which are not unique to UP, our faculty and students have more freedom to debate, more room to explore and to innovate than in other private and government educational institutions.

To give one example, UP Manila administers a School of Health Sciences in three campuses (Leyte, Aurora and South Cotabato), which offers a ladderized system of medical education where students can first get a degree in midwifery, return to serve their community for some time, then go back to get a degree in nursing. Eventually, they get their medical degree.

This semester the board of regents approved a master’s program in medical anthropology, the first of its kind not just in the Philippines but in the region and which will help to make our health care system and providers become more culturally sensitive, from understanding illnesses like bangungot to the management of the little armies that accompany a patient as “bisita” (visitors) and “bantay” (watchers).

National university

Look quickly again at the title of today’s column.  Even today, Filipinos sometimes think of UP as The State University, which is an archaic term because there are now many state universities and colleges. In 2008, a law was passed designating UP as the national university.

I felt that was long overdue. Our neighboring countries all have their national universities, which are given preferential treatment by governments. UP does get a subsidy from the national government but the budget has been shrinking each year, and is a long way off from what other national universities get in the region.

Yet expectations of UP continue to grow. Last year some 65,000 students took the UPCAT, of which only a fifth could be taken in. Over the weekend, 72,000 students trooped to UP campuses for the UPCAT.

Filipino parents slave away to get their children through private schools and review classes with the hope that they will make it to UP but they also need to pressure government to put more resources into our national university so that we can take care of their children’s needs, not just for academics but also around infrastructure and equipment, dorms, even recreation, food and wellness facilities.

Having said all this, I am going to let you in on a little secret. I was originally going to entitle my column “Aray, Kuya, Aray, Ate” as a way of joking about the painful irony of the timing of the two readers’ letters. Just the day before Gonzalo’s letter was published, I was trying to convince a retired physician and UP professor to support scholarships for medical students—not in UP but in the West Visayas State University in Iloilo. I have used my column in the past to appeal for more of such scholarships to WVSU.

Last Monday, the Inquirer published Lagare’s letter which refuted Gonzalo’s argument about UP and corrupt graduates (Salamat, Jordeene!)  but which still reiterated, albeit gently, that I was too “UP-centric.”  Aray again because just the previous weekend, I had to shell out not a small amount of money for transportation expenses of three of my family’s scholars who are taking their National Service Training Program. These three scholars are not studying at UP but at the Polytechnic University of the Philippines, Lagare’s alma mater.

I don’t want to give the number of scholars my family supports, but here’s what I can divulge: the ratio of UP to non-UP students is 1 to 5, with most of the non-UP scholars enrolled in other state universities. I know I am courting the wrath of my UP colleagues for discriminating against UP, so let me explain, in my next column, why I am doing this.