Higher-education lows
PDI Editorial, May 15, 2005
THE RESIGNATION of the Dominican educator, Fr. Rolando V. De la Rosa, O.P., as chair of the Commission on Higher Education shows how the tentacles of petty politics and nepotism have reached higher education, choking it of the feeblest striving toward excellence, pulling it down to the level of the middling, the mediocre and the meretricious.
Father De la Rosa resigned after failing to get the support of Malaca単ang and Congress in reforming the education system. Instead of backing the Commission's crackdown on substandard nursing schools, several representatives, led by Rep. Cynthia Villar (Las Pi単as), the chair of the House committee on education, pressured him to reopen 23 nursing schools across the country. The schools had been ordered closed for poor performance in board examinations and for failing to comply with the minimum requirement to have a base tertiary hospital where students could have hands-on training.
In meetings with the CHEd, Villar-whose husband, Sen. Manny Villar, has presidential ambitions-hardly showed the comportment of a legislator, much less of an educated woman, in demanding that the closure order be lifted. When her group of lawmakers was informed that the campaign against poor performing nursing schools is mandated by the Nursing Law that Congress had passed only two years ago, one lawmaker shamelessly exclaimed, "Then let us abolish that law!"
If De la Rosa had expected he would get support from Malaca単ang against such pack of malevolent and "mal-educated" lawmakers, he was wrong. The AMA computer school staved off the closure of its nursing school by going to Malaca単ang, where it got an order directing De la Rosa and his commissioners to explain the closure. In effect, Malaca単ang rebuffed the CHEd and stayed the closure.
How computer and nursing schools have achieved political clout despite their poor performance in electronic communication engineering and in nursing board exams should show how educational franchises and profit-oriented schools have built up their resources by packing their classrooms with enrollees, without the least provision for student selectivity and quality standard-indeed, without the least investment in campus infrastructure and pedagogical facilities. Some schools appear to have shored up their position by getting cozy with politicians in Congress and Malaca単ang.
It is these same politicians who have made a merry cottage industry out of establishing state colleges and universities (SCUs) and local colleges and universities (LCUs). The proliferation of these SCUs and LCUs has invited a comment from the British Council that the Philippines has too many colleges and universities. While it is true that these schools provide people greater access to education, the truth is that many SCUs and LCUs have been established to cash in on public works funds.
These colleges and universities are also packed with political appointees that have made them dens of nepotism. Moreover, these schools have charters created by law so that they can insist that their programs are beyond the supervision of CHEd. Sen. Juan Flavier has called for a moratorium on the establishment of new SCUs and LCUs, but the resignation of De la Rosa should indicate that our politicians would continue to set up schools for parochial interests and self-aggrandizement.
What picture are we getting here? Politics is destroying higher education. Politicians and bureaucrats have already destroyed basic education-that is obvious in the annual litany of class-opening problems, such as the lack of teachers, classrooms and books, which provide petty politicos and greedy bureaucrats with the alibi to dip into the public coffers and spend resources, leaving them enough room for kickbacks. This state of affairs has perennially saddled our basic education with issues of quantity, not quality, so that we are producing graduates who hardly have the rudimentary qualification for college.
Now, politicians and bureaucrats are set to complete the sweep. After destroying basic education, they seek to infect higher education with the virus of commercialism and academic philistinism. Father De la Rosa, a former rector magnificus of the University of Sto. Tomas and Colegio de San Juan de Letran in Calamba, saw the writing on the wall and would have none of it. He said he would rather go back to his "priestly and religious duties" than compromise his principles as an educator and an academic manager. Perhaps, back in the peace of his Dominican monastery, he could pray and exorcise the demons of politics and greed that are killing Philippine higher education.
Higher-education lows
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