UP’s impractical proposal

This is in reaction to the news report titled “UP board mulls moving class opening to August” (Metro, 12/20/13).

First of all, imagine a public elementary or high school scenario where at least 70 students are seated in a packed classroom with no (working) electric fans while their teacher is struggling hard to teach at the height of the blazing Philippine summer. One can easily imagine how impractical changing the academic calendar would be for Philippine basic education. It must be emphasized, however, that these same students are the ones which UP must strive to serve first of all. These are the students UP must at all costs not leave behind. With its proposal to desynchronize the UP academic calendar with the whole of Philippine basic education and all other state universities and colleges, the UP administration seems to be deluding itself that UP is not a public university pledged to serve the Filipino people above all.

The UP administration has not offered any study which proves that the proposed calendar change will not impact negatively on the university’s accessibility to Filipino undergraduate and graduate students. The administration’s flimsy five-page proposal offers no evidence that there is any substance to what they claim as their main objective: international student mobility. What percentage of UP students will actually enroll abroad, in the Asean countries or in Europe in between their regular semesters at UP? Would it be even 2 percent? The administration cannot even say if any “market” exists for UP education in the Asean. The last we heard is that Thais would much prefer to study in Europe or North America than elsewhere. These glaring weaknesses of the proposal of the administration are some of the reasons the proposal was resoundingly voted down in the UP Diliman University Council (UC) meeting on Dec. 2, 2013. (The UC is UP’s highest academic policymaking body.)

UP vice president for public affairs Dr. Prospero de Vera was quoted as saying that “most Diliman colleges seem to be ready for the shift.” This claim is baseless and was already completely refuted during that Dec. 2 UC meeting. Moreover, his statement that the UP Board of Regents also has the final say on the matter, regardless of any UC decision, smacks of authoritarianism and bullying and rides roughshod over all of UP’s cherished democratic traditions and processes.  All this for the cheap edification of some of its overly ambitious and supremely vain officials addicted to their false and vapid concept of “internationalization,” and who seem to have forgotten that UP is a public institution meant to serve the Filipino people first, most of all the poorest and most marginalized of our intelligent youth.

—RAMON GUILLERMO,

national president,

All UP Academic

Employees Union