Irrelevant subjects

THIS REFERS to the Inquirer’s March 30 editorial titled “Failing grade” (of college education). This editorial only highlights the fact that everyone is clueless about the problem. Some 19 years of statistics from the Professional Regulation Commission clearly show that the precipitous decline from 60 percent passing grade to 30 percent only started when the colleges overloaded the students with subjects irrelevant to their courses.

Is “Florante at Laura” or “Agrarian Reform,” to name two such subjects, relevant to Engineering or Nursing? Does it make sense to overload a course with over 200 units per semester when these are just 134-unit courses in the best colleges abroad? The root of the problem is greed. The unnecessary cost for every student is P50,000. At 200,000 graduates/year, the colleges gain a windfall of P10 billion each year.

If not for greed, how else would 2,140 colleges suddenly sprout like sari-sari stores on every corner? (We have 24 colleges for every million Filipinos as compared to only 7 colleges per million Americans, but the bulk of our exported talents are domestic helpers.) The Commission on Higher Education (CHEd) cannot resolve this problem because the CHEd itself is the problem.

—RAY VINCENT, P.E.,
scientist.nasa
@yahoo.com