What is the minimum salary in Philippines for a university graduate? The answer would depend on so many things: where you graduated; what profession or degree; where you are having a job. What can you afford as newly graduate? As a neophyte? As a newbie? As a freshperson? A cheaply paid job that is more often than not an insult to your education and effort to finish... or is it? I have to admit it really depends on which one you are: overqualified, underqualified or unidentified. I also have o admit that diplomas are rebuttable as the quality of education all over the country is not the same: others are superior while others, let's admit is, are... well you know what I mean, right?

The topic that I have had with someone last weekend it the poverty in Philippines. This person told me that television is sucking each and every soul of Filipinos. Why? Because of the commercials: buy this car, buy this phone, this TV brand, all the appliances and electronic gadgets you can think of. The truth is, how much does it cost? Say the cellular phone is around Php 10,000 (majority of and you bought it. If you are a newly grad, do you think you can still live for the remaining days of the month after you bought the phone? Say your gross income for the month (an even bigger estimate compare to average) is Php 15, 000, you still have Php 5,000 left. But the truth is, you still have to pay taxes and it's around Php 750. You are left with Php 4,250. Are you renting a place? Are you sharing expenses with parents? Are you buying load for that phone you bought? Are you eating at all? Are you commuting for work? In short, it is very difficult to live with such salary if one has to buy a gadget. Or an electronic appliance for that matter: television set, DVD player, sterio, MP3 player, washing machine and all these things. Add the fact that you have siblings to spend for.

What I am saying is, Filipinos has the same aspirations in terms of material stuffs as western people do. But is the income the same? Television has redefined what is a need and what is luxury: all that is advertised in TV now is somewhat a "NEED". And that is bad. People are having debts just to buy these gadgets... is it good? It is good if you don't get buried in debts which happens usually. It is good if you are not thinking of your future and save for yourself. Why? I have to tell you that you are not 100% healthy all the time. Do you have health insurance? Do you have dental insurance? These things? Think about your future. gadgets only cause you to spend more. Buy the necessary, not the poshy that you don't actually use those functions as I know people can ever hardly use the call function there. Phones are mostly use to brag and that is not so good.

Mind you, here in Netherlands, regular salary, the basic, the lowest salary for a newly graduate is €1,700. And how much is the price of a mobile phone? A colored, with camera, with radio phone can cost as low as €30 and that has a €15 load in it already. Now do you see the difference? The percentage to gross salary in Philippines versus here in Netherlands is 0.0176 % versus 66.67%. Now do you see? Save for your lives, these gadgets can be stolen, lost and even not be properly used. Bragging and making the gadget as a social symbol is a shame. Build your future instead!

The following was a letter to many of us from our dear professor back in the university, but now, since we are in the same level, some of my friends comfortably call her in her first name, Mariel... I quote the very good content of this mail and I would like to share this all to all of you, for this NOT only apply to us who are/were connected with UP but to everyone... I have yet to write my reaction on this...

Note: Prof. Diokno was former UP Vice-President for Academic Affairs, daughter of the late Statesman Jose Diokno, and a great historian.

The Future of Higher Learning and UP* by Maria Serena I. Diokno

It might surprise you that a historian like myself has chosen to address the future rather than dwell on our past. My reason is straightforward. We have begun our second century! Invigorated by our first hundred years of achievement as the nation’s university, the university of our people, we embark on our second century standing on solid ground, confident of our strengths, humbled by the lessons of past failures and yes, proud that despite our imperfections, we have been able to attract young Filipinos who, at least while under our guardianship, represented the promise of a bright future. It is this promise that in the main has kept us going. The future that has yet to unfold, the future we have some power to direct, is the university’s logical orientation. We converse with the young who represent tomorrow’s players and decision makers; we design programs with the future in mind; we produce knowledge that does not always have instant application but which we believe, or earnestly hope, will help create a better society and a more inhabitable world. That the university speaks to the future is the implicit backdrop of change in the academe: standards become more rigorous with time; curricula are updated and advanced; knowledge is constantly pushed beyond what we once saw as its limits. Our job as academics, in short, is to hark to the future; our job is also to help create it.

Recent studies of tertiary education show that the future of societies, local, national and global, will rest increasingly on higher learning. In its report in 2000 on developing countries, the Task Force on Higher Education and Society proclaimed: “Higher education is no longer a luxury: it is essential to national social and economic development.”[1] Yet developments in recent decades have tended to undermine this assertion. My purpose in this lecture is to discuss trends and global projections about the future of higher education and the impact on or implications for UP. I will cite data on the United States and England on purpose, to draw out what, on the surface, are implausible comparisons.

What are present global conditions like? Three trends ended the last century and inaugurated the 21st: the massification of higher education, with more students entering college than ever before (the National University of Mexico and the University of Buenos Aires each have an enrollment of more than 200,000 students![2]); the differentiation of universities into basically teaching institutions, polytechnic colleges, junior colleges, and high-end research universities; and the exponential growth of knowledge at an ever-quickening pace.

In 2004, worldwide, there were 132 million students in higher education compared to 68 million in 1991. About a quarter came from the East Asia and Pacific region, which experienced the largest growth in absolute number (by 25 million from 1991 to 2004), and another quarter from the U.S. and Western Europe.[3] In Southeast Asia, as Figure 1 illustrates (slide 1), the Philippines until the 1990s had the highest gross enrollment ratio[4] at the tertiary level in the region (percent of population in the five-year age group following the official age secondary school is completed), second only to Singapore since then. We have long had the largest number of college students, overtaken by Indonesia only more than a decade ago, as Figure 2 shows (slide 2). But the largest expansion in college enrollment has taken place in Thailand and Indonesia (slide 3), from nearly 131,000 Thai students in 1975 to 1.2 million in 1995, and close to 280,000 Indonesian students in 1975 to 2.3 million twenty years later.

To cope with the demand for tertiary enrollment, many countries in the world responded horizontally, by creating more universities or taking in greater numbers, and vertically, by putting up institutions that cater to diverse capacities (community college, technical institute, comprehensive university, distance education, research university). In developing countries, however, higher education institutions are less diversified than in high-income countries. In our case, junior and community colleges do not exist perhaps because of the overwhelming cultural value we assign to a four-year college diploma, even if it comes from an institution hardly more advanced than a high school.

The challenge of marginalization

On the other hand, and this is the paradox of our century, higher education faces the grave challenge of marginalization at a time when knowledge so rigorously demands it. The university budget is typically the most visible articulation of marginalization efforts for several reasons. The global fight against poverty gives primordial significance to basic education; higher learning must take a back seat while functional literacy is raised. In the developing world, fundamental needs of health care, education and social security battle it out in the tragedy of the commons. And in countries like ours that are ruled by governments with self-serving priorities and without a vision of the future except for Fantasy Island (think Enchanted Kingdom), even the beleaguered budget for education becomes an arena of corruption, patronage and mediocrity (think textbook scam).

However, even in the developed world, or what used to be so, university budgets have remained at insufficient levels. Prof. Alison Richard, vice-chancellor of Cambridge University, laments that British universities are “hopelessly under-funded.”[5] All over the U.S., even prior to the implosion of Wall Street, public universities voiced a similar complaint.

One effect of marginalization is the tendency toward market-driven education, or what some call the corporatization of the academe. Public universities struggle to survive amid reduced budgets, growing competition among tertiary institutions, faculty piracy prompted by indecent salaries, and reputations that increasingly rest upon global rankings of universities. The current drive for the internationalization of universities, which the survey of The Times Higher Education Supplement lays heavy emphasis on, is partly an attempt to pirate the best talents in the world, both faculty and students. Countries like the UK, where tuition at top universities has remained low compared to Harvard and other American universities in their league, are under tremendous pressure to raise fees. Vice-Chancellor Richard of Cambridge complains: “There is a prevailing view in the UK that students, all students, are a source of income, not an investment in the future.”[6] Across the Atlantic, scholarships based on need are being replaced by merit-based awards as American universities attempt to raise their ranking by taking in better qualified students, who usually do not come from lower income, black or Latino families.[7]

The issue of access

Access to higher education, then, has become a major global concern and not just in obvious cases such as ours and other developing countries. Although tertiary enrollment in England rose in 2000 compared to 1994, for example, the Higher Education Funding Council pointed out that the proportion of poorer students “hardly changed at all.”[8] Furthermore, college-age students in England’s wealthiest neighborhoods have a better than 50% chance of entering university, compared to 10% for students residing in the poorest areas. In the U.S. the trend favors white American students, 30 percent of whom obtained bachelor’s degrees in 2006, compared to only 15 percent of African American students and 10 percent of Hispanic students.[9]



While entrenched divisions between rich and poor in the West might offer solace to those who have long been familiar with inequity, the issue of access in the ‘developed’ world is approached quite differently from ours in the less developed countries. In the United States, for instance, the issue of access arises from the shift in a manufacturing-driven industrial economy to a Third Wave service economy propelled by information and technological innovation.[10] About 54% of new job openings in America in the decade 2004-2014 are expected to be filled by workers with some postsecondary education,[11] unlike the old economy, which did not require college-level knowledge and skills. Today, in anticipation of greater changes to come, a call to develop a ‘college-going culture’ has been made.

Ironically in the Philippines, such a culture has not been foreign to us. Even a secretary here is required to possess a college degree, unlike in England, for example, where ‘O’ level credentials are sufficient. Yet, the fastest growing domestic job openings here do not demand higher-order competencies; only the ability to speak English with an alien twang. The fact is that in the developing world outside the West, the concern with access emanates from the stark condition of poverty and its twin, social inequity. Our Commission on Higher Education frames its vision and thrust toward poverty reduction but unfortunately, makes no projection about the local job sector in its Medium-Term Plan for Higher Education, 2005-2010 and says little else beyond a bland statement about the need to advance knowledge “for the improvement of academic instruction, productivity enhancement and job creation, and in addressing the key issues confronting the Philippine society.”[12]

Marginalization also finds articulation in the quality of learning. Listen to this: “73% of all colleges still find it necessary to offer remedial classes for entering students.”[13] Sounds like universities in a third world country, right? Wrong! The description speaks of the U.S.A. The OECD (Organization for Economic Development and Cooperation) found that 15-year-old American students placed 35th in mathematics and 36th in science among 57 countries that took part in the 2006 Programme for Student Assessment. Moreover, even the highest-achievers among American students performed below their international peers.[14] There is, too, concern in the United States that it will soon pale in the shadow of Asian universities, particularly Chinese, in the field of science and technology. For instance, The Task Force on the Future of American Innovation singles out as a contrast to the U.S., China’s recent declaration that it would transform 100 of its universities into the world’s best research institutions, a matter of Chinese national priority. China expects to do this by tapping Chinese specialists trained abroad and Chinese-American experts.[15] I have little doubt China will command its resources and meet this objective.

Now what about us? We all agree that our education pipeline is poorly constructed to begin with, and being at the other end of the pipeline, there is little we can do to clean out the rot or remove the rust or deepen the pipeline. But even in UP, higher education has become increasingly remedial not just at the level of incoming freshmen, who experienced the XDS program in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, and summer bridge programs in the ‘90s, but also juniors and seniors who do not possess or are not adequately being prepared for 21st century competencies. Yet, they enter the world with our diploma.

Each year I worry that we will graduate students with a bachelor’s degree who do not know how to write, or do not understand what they read in a critical way (or perhaps read very little), or are unable to analyze what they learn before recycling it in an essay exam or a term paper. The inabilities of incoming students we can blame on basic education—the clog in the pipeline—but the responsibility for the failed abilities of upper undergraduate students rests at least partly on our shoulders.

Dealing with corrective needs

My sense is that we are not prepared to deal with the corrective needs that plague higher education. First, our attitude is that we are here to advance knowledge, not to cure it. When students enter UP, we assume they possess the prerequisites and if they do not, that is their problem, not ours. Second, if we were to spend our energy and resources on remedial education, less would be left for real education, which is our primary, many would argue, sole, task. Third, by doing remedial courses we diminish our standards and thereby shortchange our students.

All these are valid arguments. But what is not acceptable is when we ourselves lower standards to ensure that our courses will always have students or because teaching is too painstaking and eats up far too much of our time. For instance, a number of colleagues have suggested to me that the reason for the surprisingly large number of honor graduates is that our GE program has become effortless. With 45 units easily in the bag, our students can still attain honors even if they perform less ably in their major courses. I do not know if this is true but if it is, the fault is ours and ours alone. Have some of us succumbed to the market orientation that in order to attract students and sustain departmental access to, say, equipment funds, our GE courses must be easy to pass? Are the learning materials we have developed, including those that apply educational technologies, too simple, too remedial that we end up sacrificing substance for form? Do the GE readings challenge our students? And do the exams we subject GE students to actually test their ability to think critically, to be creative, to write coherently, to argue on the basis of sound judgment, and so on? The strength of the GE program is its ability to challenge, and this is, or ought to be, the very source of its attractiveness.

Whenever I cringe at my students’ essays, whether written in Filipino or English, they tell me that one reason they did not learn to write in UP is that when their papers or exams are returned, all they see is a number. No indication whatsoever is written about what the number actually means, about which part of the essay is poorly argued or badly written and why. So they repeat the same mistakes—because they passed those courses anyway—until they get to me. I tell them that at the senior level it is a little too late for me to undo what they have internalized, even as I apply the weapon of fear followed by horrifying grief upon reading their first draft.

Working backwards

What strategy could possibly address this problem? First, I propose we take a look at our methods courses and work backward in terms of the knowledge and competencies we expect our majors to acquire along the way. We can do this in clusters of disciplines although, given the transdisciplinal nature of knowledge, discussions across fields would be instructive. Second, let us review the GE program along the lines I noted above. Third, I strongly urge the administration to bring UP into the network of universities that do CPR, Calibrated Peer Review, an online self-learning tool developed by UCLA that began in chemistry because American educators were alarmed that science majors did not know how to write. CPR exposes the student to excellent reading material, teaches the student how to read the article, and finally, how to tell whether an essay is well or badly written. Hence the term ‘calibrated peer review.’ As its website explains, CPR “enables frequent writing assignments even in large classes with limited instructional resources” and actually “can reduce the time an instructor now spends reading and assessing student writing.”[16]

What we should work on is our own web-based tool for writing in Filipino. Alternatively, although this could be costlier, there is the model of the University of Cape Town in South Africa, which has a writing center (called Center for Higher Education Development) where students are sent and then, in groups, are guided to rewrite their essays. The center also deals with remedial problems in numeracy. Faculty at the center work full-time and, like any other faculty, are expected to research on problems in their field in addition to mentoring students.

Finally, and this is where we as an institution have been remiss, we need to make public our expectations of basic education. I do not suggest this as a guide to passing the UPCAT but as a response to the changing demands on pre-collegiate education arising from the pace of knowledge creation, with which we are most familiar. If we inform the Department of Education and schools about rising expectations, the more committed ones will hopefully strive to meet them.

The Oxford Question

It is difficult to speak about remedial education apart from the question of access since there is a positive correlation between income and UPCAT score. The higher the applicant’s declared annual income category, the higher the subtest scores except in test items in Filipino. Tempting as it is to shy away from the question, access goes straight to the heart of our purpose as a public university, a purpose that is being debated elsewhere in the world. Posed by a professor who teaches at both Oxford and Stanford: “The fundamental question—call it the Oxford Question—underlying all the others is this: can we, in Europe, have social justice in higher education and world-class research universities? Or must we choose?”[17] Cambridge Prof. Richard argues that it is wrong for government to look upon universities as “engines for promoting social justice:”[18]

We try to reach out to the best students, whatever their background. One outcome of that is that we can help to promote social mobility. But promoting social mobility is not our core mission. Our core mission is to provide an outstanding education within a research setting.[19]

And yet this year Cambridge announced that the proportion of students it admitted from state schools rose to 59%, the highest since 1981. (State schools educate 93% of all English students.)[20] Oxford, for its part, applied a new procedure this year that takes into account the applicant’s neighborhood (poor, middle-income, wealthy). Mike Nicholson, the university's director of undergraduate admissions, explains why: “We want to make sure that we are not missing pupils because we are using A’s at GCSE [General Certificate of Secondary Education] on their own without more information about the context within which they were gaining those grades.”[21] Achieving top grades under difficult conditions, Nicholson maintains, suggests high potential. “Using grades alone,” he says, “is too crude. I want to make sure that, if students are applying from places that have very few people progressing into higher education, we recognise that they are breaking the mould.”[22]

I find it paradoxical that as elite universities in the UK are changing admissions policy to take in poorer students, we in UP have taken the opposite route. Dissatisfied with the affirmative action component of the previous admission scheme because, among others, it did not discriminate among high school grades, Diliman opted to correct high school grade inflation by pegging school marks to the UPCAT score. The high school grade, which is supposed to indicate student diligence in learning over a stretch of time, has thus been merged with the UPCAT, a one-time measure. Two students with identical high school grade averages—previously a one-to-one correspondence—can now be assigned entirely different marks, depending on the UPCAT performance of the school’s graduates. This adjustment index, which can be equal to, greater or less than one, is, according to proponents, a truer, more accurate indicator of student merit.

However, as Prof. Claude Steele, Psychology Department Chair at Stanford University, points out, scores on standardized admission tests are also inflated by such advantages as private school training, admission test review classes, access to books and computers at home, and so on[23]—advantages, in short, enjoyed by children in better-off families. It is thus no surprise that 93 of the 100 high schools with the highest UP adjustment factor in 2008 are private, while 70 of the bottom 100 schools are public (general).[24] The adjustment index, then, is also an indicator of affluence or lack of affluence. By correcting one sort of inequity, have we not created or aggravated another?

In a way our problem with social inequity is like that of deteriorating basic education. We are at the receiving end of both and are powerless to change the reality that precedes entry into UP. One could argue that it is not the University’s job to cure the ills of basic education or to reduce social inequity. Perhaps so, but neither is it ours to make policy that keeps qualified entrants at a remedial level, or that reinforces inequity or punishes those with less.

The purpose of the university

In all the discussions we have had on admissions, there is one thing we entirely overlooked, and that is the relationship between merit-based admissions and the purpose of the university. William Bowen, president of Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and before that, president of Princeton University for 16 years, explains that

the starting premise [of admissions] is that a school has an obligation to make the best possible use of the limited number of places in each entering class so as to advance as effectively as possible the broad purposes the school seeks to serve. Within the very real limits imposed by the fallibility of any selection process of this kind, a school should try hard to be fair to every applicant; but the concept of fairness itself has to be understood within the context of the obligations of a university. Accordingly, in making these difficult choices among well-qualified candidates, considerations other than just test scores and grades come into play.[25]


These considerations, in turn, are premised upon not just the qualities of individual students but also, Bowen adds, the shared features of an entire group of students who, by their common characteristics, enrich the learning environment and bring into it the diversity that is an indispensable part of university life. As a Princeton graduate remarked, “People do not learn very much when they are surrounded only by the likes of themselves.”[26]

And this is true. Before I entered UP I was exposed to only private school students, having studied in Catholic schools since kindergarten. My father, himself the product of private education, insisted we children study at UP precisely so that we would meet people from all walks of life. A few years ago De La Salle University tracked down its ‘Star’ scholars (the equivalent of our ‘Oblation’) who had declined admission. One reason they cited for choosing UP was our heterogeneous population in contrast to La Salle’s elitist character.

Valuing diversity

But I think the question before us is not that a diverse student population offers immense learning opportunities to everyone all around, but rather, whether UP values this diversity enough to count it among its purposes. If UP does, then merit in admissions would take on additional meaning beyond the rigid convention of high grades and test scores. If, on the other hand, this is not our purpose, then we can end all discussions on admissions here and now.

There are a couple of other implications of global trends that I wish to take up. The university will no doubt retain its role as arbiter of academic worth but with a difference, for in this century, goals and targets will no longer be fixed as before because of rapid advances across all disciplines. Just when we think we are nearing our mark, it moves farther away. Moving targets thus change the meaning of laggard: an intellectual laggard in this century is not only the one left behind but also the one who stays put. It will no longer be sufficient, and neither should it be permissible, for departments, colleges, campuses to simply coast along in our second century. The rapid movement of knowledge also demands that we select our leaders at all levels with this in mind. Academic leaders who find comfort in the isolated quiet of their offices, or are buoyed by the absence of discussion or debate, or who mistake the stony silence of faculty indifference as implicit support, will never take us forward. UP’s second century has no place for laidback leaders who move only when prodded or threatened.

To attract and encourage the best leaders, we also need to rethink our search process. The matrix of candidates’ strengths and weaknesses, which is usually the end product of the search process, actually ought to be just the starting point. In what context are candidates’ attributes perceived as strengths and weaknesses, and relative to what goals, needs or direction? A perceived weakness could, in a different context or relative to a certain thrust, actually be a strength and vice-versa. There is, too, little value added by search committees that are not allowed to exercise any judgment beyond the enumeration of candidates’ attributes.

In the final analysis, the kind of leaders we desire will depend on what we aspire for as an institution of higher learning and a community of scholars. For example, the presidents of the world’s leading universities were studied in order to answer the question: Are the best universities led by top researchers? The universities were taken from the 2004 edition of the Shanghai Jiao Tong University ranking, whose criteria are presented on the screen (slide 4). The study counted the number of each president’s scholarly publication citations, rated the numbers against disciplinary citation norms, and then correlated the normalized figures with the ranking of the universities.

The pattern that emerged is as follows. The higher the global ranking of a university, the more likely that the citations of its president are also high. Heads of the top 50 universities, for instance, are two and a half times more highly cited than those at the bottom 50. A president of a top 20 university is cited nearly five times more than a leader in the bottom quintile. In short, the study found that although “a simple link between the position of a university and the research history of its leader does not explain causality …. [the] results do, however, suggest that being a good manager and leader is enhanced in a university context if a president is a successful researcher.”[27]

I cite the study to stress that in light of the profound changes in knowledge and learning and at an unprecedented pace, the type of leaders we want at any and all levels, and the scale of scholarship we expect from them will, in the end, depend on what our collective and institutional ambitions are. So as with the question of access, we once again return to our purpose: what do we wish to become in the 21st century?

Thankfully it is not my task to answer all the questions I raise. Whatever we decide—and we must do so with deliberate thought and discussion—let us keep sight of our mission to advance and share knowledge in and beyond the classroom. The university, after all, is not a gated subdivision; it is and always will be engaged in the life of the community, the nation, and the world. We celebrate our successes at a time when nearly everywhere around us, at home and in the world, voices of optimism struggle to be heard amid the wail of human suffering or the deceptive silence of apathy or despair. The paradox of celebration amid tribulation is a stern reminder that we belong to a public community larger than our academic republic. More than a community that supports us and to which we are answerable, it is a community to which we are wedded, good times and bad.

The sense of belonging

It concerns me that our students have become more self-absorbed and less caring about this broader community. In my GE class last semester, most of them said they are moved to act only when directly affected. Since they rarely read the papers or listen to the news, they cannot get affected by what they do not know (or do not bother to know). A combination of hard times, parental pressure, desire for security in the face of an uncertain future, and disenchantment with today’s leaders have caused the young to look upon their degree as little more than a job ticket. As a result, grades have taken precedence over learning; their real world has shrunk to their family and friends, while the one world they can freely venture into is the chat room, Friendster and other social networking sites, where they control the shift in boundaries of anonymity and familiarity and decide whom to let in and out.

There is, of course, no point developing a sense of humanity that connects one only to the tiny radius of relatives and friends or to the self-created virtual world. The sense of belonging to a collective larger than ourselves, our families, our immediate circle of friends and colleagues is fundamental to our humanity. As our history and that of humankind demonstrate, the most significant and uplifting human successes have been those born out of collective action. What would one’s personal success mean amid a sea of people wallowing in subhuman conditions? Indeed, what kind of humanity is it that selects the individuals it can relate to and deliberately disregards the humanness of others? I hope this kind of inward pragmatism—heedless to the needs of others—is just a phase of youthfulness. My senior students assure me they think differently from the freshmen I cited.

Do not think for a moment that I blame the students entirely for thinking this way. Such heedlessness could well be a reaction to or a product of a deeper pathology that engulfs our society. It is not my purpose to break down this social pathology into its anatomical parts. But allow me to offer a different take on the matter. Foucault explains that every conceptual apparatus sets its own restrictions of what is and isn’t possible, and within these limits, develops its own standard of normalcy.[28] During American rule, for example, the logic of imperialism deemed it rational to postpone political independence while we were perceived to be unready for it and in its stead, enjoy the benefits of progress American style. It was not rational and therefore not normal to insist, as the Katipunan and subsequent revolutionary societies did, that freedom is indivisible in all its forms and expressions. At the turn of the 20th century, Filipino society was classified into ‘poor and ignorant’ at one end, and ‘rich and intelligent’ at the other. Unthinkable it was to switch the colonial pairing around: ‘poor and intelligent’ or ‘rich and ignorant’ was simply not possible. And so each generation, each society declares its own meaning of normalcy according to its world of possibilities.

I hold that the task of the University is to depart from the realm of possibilities and the boundaries of normalcy it creates, and instead explore what historian Michel-Rolph Trouillot calls ‘the unthinkable’, or “that which one cannot conceive within the range of possible alternatives, that which perverts all answers because it defies the terms under which the questions were phrased.”[29] To return to the ‘Oxford question’ as an example, the thinkable frame juxtaposes social justice against a world-class research university, presenting the two as the only options available in the matter of admissions. The unthinkable, on the other hand, would turn the question on its head and challenge its underbelly: why these two choices in the first place?

Thinking the unthinkable

Thinking the unthinkable will be the University’s primary challenge in the 21st century in every discipline and field of endeavor. This challenge will demand not just a shift in our mental inclinations but also new ‘instruments of thought’—concepts, methods, frameworks—that will enable this shift to happen.[30] Oftentimes we do not realize how normalcy—that is, keeping within established and comfortable limits of possibilities—has become the hidden curriculum because, as Foucault again points out, people’s thoughts are basically shaped by rules or assumptions they are not always aware of. In our case, bureaucratic thinking and a politicized approach to problems, goals and decisions block the academic’s pathway to the unthinkable.

A bureaucratic mentality ties the power of policy to the authority that enforces it rather than to the substance and merit of the policy. Backed by the weight of office, the bureaucrat’s appeal is legalistic, not intellectual. Rules are narrowly construed rather than understood in relation to issues that question, and quite possibly subvert, the very basis of the rules. The only possibility in the world of the bureaucrat, therefore, is compliance, and any attempt to question it is met with technicalities. The inability to explain the rationale of a policy, or the reference to its longstanding existence as an explanation, are typically bureaucratic responses, feeble but effective only because the mental device of the bureaucrat has become part of the academic’s sense of normalcy.

I do not mean to belittle our rules but the University is not a bureaucracy; it is an academic community. In our next hundred years some of our policies and rules will have to change in reasoned anticipation of the demands of knowledge, new modalities of learning, evolving relationships within the institution, etc. We must prepare ourselves for this future by learning to think outside the box. To do so, we must avoid one other pitfall, the politicized approach.


Competition, vested interest, power—these are things that play upon human nature and human institutions, the university not excepted. The question is, how do we frame these within our domain of possibilities? In the arena of politics numbers count because they are the expression of popular will. In contrast, in the academe what counts are the discussion and debate that precede the vote and give it value.

As a young instructor dismayed by the politics of elders in the department, I once sought the advice of the late law Prof. Haydee Yorac regarding a decision obtained by the majority’s show of hands. Her response was unequivocal: a majority vote does not turn what is essentially wrong into something right, pointing to decisions of the Marcos-led Batasang Pambansa as an example. Politicians get away with the tyranny of numbers because the conceptual apparatus of politics deems this not only possible but normal. If the same kind of thinking persists in the University, it is because we, too, have imbibed the politicians’ sense of normalcy. Hence we agonize between the academic and the pragmatic or politically palatable, between merit and livelihood as the basis for promotion, between competence and closeness to officials as the pivotal point in making decisions.



In sum, the politicized and bureaucratic mental frames are averse to change, the former in defense of the status quo or of self- or group interest, and the latter, hampered by limp intellectual muscle. In this century we will need to break out of the conspiracy of the normal, wean ourselves away from our comfort zone, and develop a frame of mind that is open to different possibilities, that eclipses old boundaries and invites novel ways of thinking, doing and learning. From the practice of our disciplines to our pedagogy, from how we relate to one another as colleagues to the structures that govern us, from channels to processes, the framework of the unthinkable will be a valuable guide with long-reaching effect. To think, speak and do the unthinkable, that is the challenge of our century.

Thank you.

* Centennial Lecture, NISMED, UP Diliman, 18 November 2008.

[1] Task Force on Higher Education and Society, Higher Education in Developing Countries: Peril and Promise (Washington: The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, 2000), p. 14.
[2] Task Force, p. 27.
[3] UNESCO Institute for Statistics, Global Education Digest 2006: Comparing Education Statistics Across the World (Montreal, 2006), p. 21.
[4] Percent of population in the five-year age group following the official age secondary school is completed.
[5] Jessica Shepherd, “Cambridge mission ‘not social mobility’, The Guardian, 10 September 2008.
[6] Shepherd.
[7] Robert M. Diamond, “Why Colleges Are So Hard to Change,” Inside Higher Ed, 8 September 2006, http://insidehighered.com/views/2006/09/08/diamond, accessed 25 September 2008.
[8] “Student Access Inequality Exposed,” BBC News, 19 January 2005, http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/ fr/-/2/hi/uk_news/education/4185697.stm
[9] Edward M. Kennedy, “What Spellings Got Right and Wrong,” Inside Higher Ed, 3 October 2006, http://insidehighered.com/views/2006/10/03/kennedy.
[10] Partnership for 21st Century Skills, “21st Century Skills, Education and Competitiveness: A Resource and Policy Guide,” p. 2, www.21stcenturyskills.org.
[11] D. E. Hecker, “Occupational Employment Projections to 2014,” Monthly Labor Review (November 2005): 80, cited in Pathways to College Network, “The Facts: Postsecondary Access and Success,” Boston: The Education Resources Institute, Inc., 2007, www.pathways@teri.org.
[12] Commission on Higher Education, Medium-Term Development Plan, 2005-2010: Responding to the Challenges of a Dynamic Environment, p. xviii.
[13] Kennedy.
[14] Partnership for 21st Century Skills, p. 8.
[15] The Task Force on the Future of American Innovation, “Measuring the Moment: Innovation, National Security, and Economic Competitiveness,” November 2006, p. 26, www.futureofinnovation.org. See also: “U.S. Slips in Attracting the World’s Best Students,” The New York Times, 21 December 2004; “China Luring Scholars to Make Universities Great,” The New York Times, 28 October 2005.


[16] Calibrated Peer Review, http://cpr.molsci.ucla.edu/.
[17] Timothy Garton Ash, “Can We Have World-class Universities as well as Social Justice in Education?” The Guardian, 29 May 2008.
[18] Quoted in Shepherd.
[19] Ibid.
[20] Shepherd.
[21] Anushka Asthana, “Oxford Targets the Poorest Postcodes,” The Observer, 17 August 2008.
[22] Ibid.
[23] Claude M. Steele, Expert report prepared for Gratz, et. al. v. Bollinger, et. al., No. 97-75321 (E.D. Mich.), “The Compelling Need for Diversity in Higher Education,” January 1999, http://www.vpcomm.umich.edu/admissions/research/expert/steele.html
[24] Vice-President for Academic Affairs A. Guevara, October 2007.
[25] William G. Bowen, Expert report prepared for Gratz, et. al. v. Bollinger, et. al., No. 97-75321 (E.D. Mich.), http://www.vpcomm.umich.edu/admissions/research/expert/bowen.html
[26] Quoted in ibid.
[27] Amanda Goodall, “The Leaders of the World’s Top 100 Universities,” International Higher Education 42 (Winter 2006), http://www.bc.edu/bc_org/avp/soe/cihe/newsletter/Number42/p3_ Goodall.htm
[28] Michel Foucault, The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences (New York: Random House, Inc. 1970).
[29] Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History (Boston: Beacon Press, 1995), p. 82.
[30] Pierre Bourdieu, cited in ibid.

I admit I have abandoned this blog for a while. Actually, for a long time. Because of this, I never knew when this blog started to have a very good PR. I have to admit that the traffic over here sucks for the desertion that I have made. I am so glad however that it still got a PR from google. And that is PR 3.

What does it mean to me? It feels like a good accmplishment actually. I know my blog is not that much but this is my first blogger blog and this is where I learned. Now, I have domains which are customized for my current blogs. All the contents in this blog have paid out. I put my heart and soul in writing this actually. It was good that I never deleted this despite my shift of attention.

Now I would like to revive this blog and be more focused on the issues tacked in here which is more on Philippine culture and everything Philippines. I think the keyword density for the word Philippines or any other things related to Philippines such as Philippine culture, Philippine tourism, Philippine prostitution, Philippine business, Philippine economy, Filipinas, Filipinos and stuffs like that in this blog are just too heavy to ignore.

I am so thankful then and now I am very proud to have made this blog into its new position.

Do you want to link in this blog? If you don't have PR yet, you are welcome as well, just email me at weblogstuffs@gmail.com for that intention. Happy Blogging everyone!

No statistics, no readings, no written basis, plain observation. This is what I am writing now. I am currently in a European country and I have been why this country is so much rich and Philippines is so poor? You can tell I am a little crazy comparing the two despite the obvious. But we should also know what is benchmarking and standard. If your benchmark in determining the poorness or betterness of a country is compared to a worse one, naturally this poor country will be full of exhilirating success over the other. But compoare it with the better one and we will see. The model or benchmark must be "better" so that improvements will be achieved.



I see how people work in the Philippines: like carabaos tilling the soil under the sun. I have experienced the same and even my previous boss earning millions in a year, i know how he have sacrificed the time with the family to have this success. Here, I have went to the police office to get my permit to stay and I just got lucky to have it for two visits while others wait months, if not years to have it. Why? Because the office opens during Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays only. One more cache: They open from ten to one only. One more thing: They value themselves much more than the foreigners or immigrants.

Why di I think us Filipinos are considered as slaves? Ayala Avenue is the richest of all the streets in the Philippines. But try asking the rank and file employees of how they work, how they are valued at work and how satisfied they are. I have an idea what the answer is. But why is this so? Why is this seem to be the culture and the imposed rule though this is not right? Why do Filipinos have to work at least ten hours a day, sacrifice the families, be tired like carabaos under the sun, be opressed and still be very poor? Is the Labor Code functional in this country?

Is it correct to reason out that the boss has gone through the same process? That the boss has been enslaved before he or she reached the position? But how can the country go in progress if this is the case? Work and work without value? How people be efficient if overworked? How can be efficient if have problems with family since most of his or her time is concentrated at work? It makes me remember what a special woman has told me upon seeing calamities in poor countries flashed over the news here in Italy: "Where there is already wet, the rain continues to fall"... She was referring that the poor countrys have difficulties getting better for the fact that poverty causes crime, which causes another crime and so on.

I see here how Italians value themselves. They have the most varied and abundant of food supply in the table but still want to improve their lives. The establishments are closed at lunchtime, locked and no workers are allowed inside because this is considered as the important time to replenish the energy, to have relaxing lunch. The same is so on sundays and also during the night. Work unions are strong.

I am aware that it is still very far to reach the status of being rich in Philippines. It is not correct that the country be rich to the extent that it will be a communist country simply to achieve this goal. It is also important that people are satisfied and happy and with freedom and exercise their rights without inhibition. I am having big hopes for this to happen in the Philippines, when Filipinos be free but I do not really know when will it happen.

Tropically Perfect
When I was still in my primary school and with my young age, the lesson of my teacher was that Philippines is almost perfect. She told me and my classmates that it is located in the tropical region where there is the sunduring the day and turns dark during the night; That the temperature in neither too hot not too cold; That our country is not the same with other countries that have much daylight during summer and much night hours during the winter season. She had also discussed on how rich the natural resources of the country is.

Despite the above teachings, many of my classmates were still dreaming to experience the snow. Many were still dreaming about the America (Europe is not that popular in the Philippines compared to the U.S of A.). But to tell the truth, I never dreamt the same thing as my classmates had. I have always loved the sun and even love it more when I am sweating under its shine. Maybe it is beacuse I never worked hard under the sun.... but maybe not.

I am currently in Europe and in fact, in the hottest part of Europe when winter strikes. Even with this, I still don't like this cold. For me, Philippines and other tropical countries have the perfect climate and weather conditions. At least for me who have experienced both the "colds" and the 'hots" as we may see.

Europe Needs to Be "Rich"
Why is this the title I gave? I have been thinking about this fact. Since Philippines have moderate temperatures, there is no much needs to survive. I have observed that here in Europe, if people do not have money to have woolen clothes and thick jackets, they would die on the streets. In Philippines, thousands are sleeping in the sidewalks of the cities, the homeless and the mentally challenged plus the "batang kalye"or street children. Europe and other cold countries have a need to be rich, have a need to have brick layered houses, have a need to warm the house to not get sick and die.

As the title says, I can conclude that due to the fact that Filipinos do not need much to "survive", they get contented and simply "survive". After all, Filipinos can still live without much clothing and shelter. It can be attributed to location why we (Filipinos) are poor. Do you agree? People here in Europe help each other or i may say implement laws to let their fellows survive. Try to see this European Rights System. Of course there are other factors like the ones in Why the Philippines is Poor


Basically Basic
As Maslow have explained in his Hierarchy of Needs Theory, higher needs in the hierarchy only come into focus when the lower needs in the pyramid are satisfied. It is true that no one can have safety, love/belonging, esteem and self actualization without satisfying the physiological needs first. Say this example, a young teen-ager couple eloped and had a child. Since they have no work and source of income, the two become impatient of each other, feel irritated of almost everything and eventually have splitted up. The child has no food because neither of the parents 
have moeny. He begged on the streets while the parents individually sorted to any crime or illegal 
activities to survive. Yes, who can think of love (the long run and real love) if one has a painful hungry stomach? This is true in Philippines, Filipinos are loving, I am sure. But with poverty, crime has risen to its top level. One problem causes another, thus, poverty causes much!

Not Even the Basic
Shall we say that we (Filipinos) may have at least the basic of the needs to live and not merely to "survive". We see what is called the "basic". Basic needs are comprised of Excretion, Eating, Sex, Drinking, Sleeping, Shelter, and Warmth. See this Representation on Maslow's Theory.

It seems that even these basic needs Filipinos are not given the minimum right to have. For excretion, how many people are doing it on the seas? Why there are fecal matters in the streets of the slums? Even in the white sad beach in an island (when I had island hopping with colleagues) there are fecal matters floating in the waters? For sure the basic need of excretion is not satified in the Philippines. I am talking here both in the urban and rural areas, especially those slum living under bridges and near the seas. Yes, this is true for some concerned people and organizations are alerted by this dirty situation. I quote here the content of the Wastewater and Sanitation program in the Philippines , giving proof that what i am saying is true.

"The Ecosan project aims to provide proper sanitation to those who do not have access to proper sanitation. These are the poorest of the poor who could not even afford to put up their own toilet. These are the people who either used their neighbor’s toilet or defecate in the open fields or open water/sea."

To be honest, among the seven basic needs mentioned, only two are accessible to Filipinos. Sex and sleeping. Although I can tell I have nothing to cite here on sex matters, it is obvious considering the population in the country. In fact, this has become a problem than a need! When Filipinos don't know how to have birth control! For sleeping, at least everyone has it. We have the "Filipino Time" (always late) and this is usually caused by sleeping more and waking up late. Even in the sidewalks, street children and homeless individuals sleep so this one, Filipinos can have enough.

For the rest of the needs, there is not enough. Food and eating is not an easy thing in the Philippines. There are pleadings for hunger and starvation like in this article found in the Asian Human Rights Commission. Moreover, the access to clean and drinkable water system in the country is getting worse. There are waters yes, but mostly, the people's safety is at stake! Even Filipinos are already alarmed by this situation. There is a forum on a government site about the Scarcity of Clean Water in Philippines.

Even in 1999, there were already many thousands of homeless individuals. Street children are also among these homeless.In Around ten years ago, here were already more then 220,000 homeless children in the country's 65 major cities, with more than half in Metro Manila. Most of the children have been forced to try to supplement the family income by begging, peddling goods or doing odd jobs. Samonte said the figure is certain to grow. For mor info about this, read this Article. With this, I can say that warmth and shelter are very far to be achieved in the Philippines by common Filipinos.

With these, I say it's the fact the the Creator has made the Philippines in the tropics. If not, street children and homeless men and women would not exist. They would die of either too much cold if Philipines is in Europe. But how about you? What do you think about this?

This is one of the fatal cancers happening in the Philippines aside from graft and corruption. We can say that all the best have ran away to other parts of the world to find better lives. I know it is not easy to be away from home, thus, most of the Filipinos abroad opt to live there, either looking for a better half in the country where he/she works (if single) or if they have families in the Philippines,  they are petitioning and/or sponsoring them to go after. This can be one reason why the country is suffering from too much loss and poverty and Why the Philippines is Poor. But who can be blamed? Even the government itself is promoting people to go abroad! Is it a joke huh! But yes, we even have this "Bagong Bayani" for those overseas Filipino workers, yes, Filipinos call them "Modern Heroes" for serving other countries than serving Philippines.

I have read one of the latest brain drain articles at The Philippine Chess Chronicles highlighting the country's latest loss of remarkable player to Singapore. Take this an an example of the country's "Brain Drain".

I am Counted
Yes, you read it right. I am out of the country. I am here for work because of the dissatisfaction of many things when I was still in the Philippines. I have a bachelor of science degree and even the Filipino people have paid for my education. Yes, I was counted as one of the "Iskolars ng Bayan" (the Nations Scholar) from the University of the Philippines. All right now you can say "Shame on you" to me but I am not alone. You know that! Not only I have this degree but I also have a good, in fact very good qualification as our felow Filipinos may consider, a Certified Public Accountant (CPA) title.

(After I got that scolding and cursing from you) I want to tell how I worked like a carabao in my Makati office. I was given the basic salary plus the fact that the amount of charged overtime was controlled. I worked even in weekends and most of the time, I was still in office at midnight or even at five in the morning. I slept under the table to relax my back from too much sitting and work when I could not hold my tiredness and sleepiness anymore. I ate late lunch when I had to finish something, yes I experienced it. The boss came and told me to finish something and I was eating that time. I never had a choice but to cover my lunch box and start working. See how I worked? And the worse side is, my salary is just enough. Not enough to compensate all the sleepless nights and restless moments that I had.

Now that I am away, I still receive e-mails from my previous co-workers clamouring about their situation. They tell me how lucky I am to have gotten away. Indeed Philippines is poor, not only on the monetary side but the way Filipinos are treated - it is the modern slavery!

Champion in the Brain Drain Contest
Among the Asian countries, Philippines ranks first in the "Brain Drain"tally. Aproximately, there are 730,000 (recently) migrants most of which are having college education. It is not only these days but rooted back since the time of the President Marcos, or even before for accounts of Ilocanos who worked as planters in Hawaii. It has become a major source of dollar for the Philippines growing to the level that there is one among the ten Filipinos are working abroad. Yes, nine million (9,000,000) so far. Daily, there are more than three thousand Filipinos (3, 000) going out to work abroad.

Satisfaction of the Slave
Those who work abroad are all literarate in English. Yes, because they are hired on that basis, to understand and to be understood. Also, to be resourceful and have initiative in work. Filipino seafarers occupy a big part and quantity in cargo ships of the world. Moreover, multinational corporations in the Southeast Asia have got their picks on Filipino professionals for their middle management teams. The worst part of the story is, teachers become domestic helpers or household assistants. Nurses became housemaids and waitresses. Engineers have become construction workers, while tourism graduates has become entertainers and dancers.

Who like to go out and be treated as slave? No one! But the circumstances leading to this fact is very strong, thus poor OFWs suffer. Who is to blame? Not only the government, not only the government officials, it is the whole nation with the wrong mind set. To tell you the truth, it is bad to be enslaved! But how do we stop this? How to stop Filipinos from thinking that progress can only be obtained by being a slave abroad? It is not overnight. Help me think how.   Click here for more info on the "Brain Drain" Issue

To be poor is not easy. This one heavy word is caused by a lot of reasons. Among others are fate, geographic location, culture, history, climate and people. With my twenty two years of stay in this country, I have learned a lot. I have also seen alot and experienced a lot. We take these few observations I have.

Geographic Location
With more than 7000 islands floating in the waters of the Pacific Ocean and surrounding seas of the country, it is very difficult to unite the inhabitants. There is a strong regionalism existing among various groups like Ilocanos, Batangenos, Bicolanos, Cebuanos, Ilonggos, among others. It is stronger for a person in Iloilo to consider himself/herself as an Ilonggo than to be considered a Filipino. Moreover, it is difficult to reach the other parts of the country with limited options. A trip from Luzon to Mindanao need either a plane or a ferry. Land travel is impossible.

The Catholic Teaching
Don't get me wrong for I have nothing against the church. In fact I salute the Roman Catholic for its power and continuous leadership. I used to attend Sunday masses when I was in Philippines. I also accompanied my granmother for novenas to various saints and for special occasions. To be honest, my grandmother also did a novena for my examination as a CPA and yes, I passed!

However, with my wide understanding and questioning nature, I have noticed that in all novena guides and preachings in the church's sermon that I have heard, it was all about being poor. "Poor will have easier way to heaven." "Blessed are the poor for they are...blah blah blha..." I don't really know why we have this kind of church teaching. Why? What is wrong with being rich? Is it wrong to have money and be not a liability to the society? Is it wrong not to beg? Is it wrong not to do pick pockets and robbery or to steal for one has enough money? I don't know what is with this poor thing when half the riches of the world are owned by the church!

To teach the majority of Filipinos this way, progress is a blurry image.

Colonial Mentality
Generally, Filipinos ( I am a Filipino) have strong inclination to foreign things. Products of America are highly regarded than Filipino products. Westerns/Caucasians are regarded as a better race. Women in the country are dying to have a fairer skin. People with long and pointed nose are proud and laughs at those with pugged ones. Imports are always better even in the Philippine basketball Association team! Oh my God! I do hate these beliefs and mentality. Women are dying to marry foreign nationals.... any would be all right except to a Filipino. Even he (the caucasian) is eighty years old! Whattalaugh! But this one defines practicality. At least this is a wise choice. But at the same time, there are a lot of lapses in it.

These traits are obviously caused by centuries of colonization in the country. But i don't think this is common attitude for other nations were also colonized and they don't have these traits. Malaysians are very proud to be of Malay race than to be Chinese. In Philippines, people wish they were Chinese!

Filipinos Are Too Wise to Be True!
Yes, there is no question with the mental capabilities of my fellow Filipinos. Bright, brilliant, genius, awesome, you name it, it is Pinoy if it is good! The truth is, there is a thin line between ingenuity and craziness. Have you heard about the recently concluded 2006 Nurse Board Exams? About the Mr. Garcia who was deported in the U.S for changing tags in a store item? I am sure these were all caused by too much knowledge. What do you think?

Local and national leaders are too intelligent. Yes, they can even keep on stealing public funds and get away with it. After all, they are Filipinos. Wise, sly...and what else?

Brain Drain
All the brilliant minds professionals and skilled workers) in the country go to search for a better world and surroundings. Most of all, for a better compensation package. It is very true that the cost of living in the Philippines is very low and is simply proportionate to the income earned by its inhabitants. But how about leisure and travel? Can anyone allow to be only within the country for all his/her life? To not observe the world around? To be contented with what the country offers? The peso needs to be competitive and the salaries of the Filipinos must be raised. At least, the majority can go abroad for travel and see the difference of their beloved Mother country compared to the neighboring Asian countries. In this manner, they would see how a real good life can be if there is discipline and unity. If there is no one throwing garbage in the rivers how beautiful and clean the waters can be... how floods could have been prevented. If the people of the country think of the future and progress.

Sigh.... I am sleepy. I do hope there is a better future for my country. I love Philippines!

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