This year’s U.P. General Alumni Homecoming has adopted as its theme “Nationalism in the Era of Globalization.” The choice is apt as the Filipino nation is on the eve of observing the Centennial of the first Philippine Republic. This happens as the present national leadership is steering the country toward full participation in the new global environment.
As the national university, U.P.’s fortunes are intimately intertwined with that of the nation. For generations, the University has been the training ground for the brightest of the country’s human resources. U.P. generates the bulk of the nation’s research and creative output. It has also served as the venue for the critical discussion of national issues. Likewise, U.P.’s alumni have played key roles in nation-building as national leaders, captains of industry, savants and teachers, healers, builders, artists, lawyers, entrepreneurs, civil servants and technocrats, activists and revolutionaries. Through the years, U.P.. has lived up to our compatriots’ expectations of its role as the country’s premier institution of higher learning.
But, this should not lull us into complacence. There is plenty of room for improvement. One result of globalization is that the performance of firms and national institutions are now judged by international standards. While U.P. remains on top in the hierarchy of Philippine higher education institutions, it ranks number 25 in the ASIAWEEK list of Asia’s top 50 universities. As the Philippines strives to regain its rightful place in the world’s community of nations, U.P. must likewise strive to become a significant member of the international community of universities.
Previously I have contended that had the Asiaweek survey focused on the social sciences and the humanities, U.P. would have ranked among the top 10 universities in Asia. U.P.’s median rank in the survey is due mainly to lackluster performance in science and technology. In the near to medium term, I am confident that U.P. will catch up with the leaders in this field. We are building up the College of Engineering in U.P. Diliman to become a regional center of excellence in this part of the world. This is a flagship program of the strategic plan of the University of U.P. Plan 2008. Recently, the national government allotted 400 million pesos for its development. This institution-building program in the engineering sciences intends to develop the critical mass of scientific personnel who will enable us to close the technological gap that separates us from out more dynamic neighbors.
U.P. has already developed the critical mass of scientific manpower in the fields of agriculture and health sciences. Recall that the College of Agriculture at U.P. Los Baños and the College of Medicine in U.P. Manila, along with the Arts and Sciences disciplines, were the original units established during U.P.’s founding in 1908. Again, had the Asiaweek survey focused on either agriculture or medicine, U.P. would have rated well above the median rank we obtained.
There is no doubt that U.P. Los Baños is a regional center of excellence in agricultural education and research. Yes, the performance of Philippine agriculture does not match the stellar billing of our premier agricultural university. This is often an object of self-deprecating if rueful levity on the part of those of us who hail from Los Baños. But as our colleagues from the Diliman School of Economics have often reminded us, poor agricultural performance owes less to the lack of a trained work force than to policies biased against agriculture. These include lack of rural infrastructure and, to some extent, the uncertainty of land tenure.
This uncertainty underlies the lack of agricultural production relative to alternate uses of land. In the news recently was the conversion of Hacienda Looc into a golf course despite its having been certified as prime agricultural land by a multidisciplinary team from U.P. Los Baños. Cases like these bode ill not only for the agricultural sector’s global competitiveness but also for that of the Philippine economy as a whole. Inefficient agriculture results in higher raw materials cost for industry as well as higher food prices. This puts an upward pressure on wages.
Similarly, there is no doubt that the kind of medical training our doctors undergo at the U.P. College of Medicine is world class. The impressive performance of our College of Medicine alumni in the world’s best medical centers attests to this fact. Our medical graduates are so good that this has led to many of them being accepted to pursue their post-doctoral training in the United States. The perverse result is that almost entire classes of the U.P. College of Medicine wind up staying there. Sadly, America’s gain is the Philippines’ loss. However, this should not detract from the fact that U.P. Manila’s School of Health Sciences at Palo, Leyte produces the bulk of rural health professionals. These professionals staff the majority of the Department of Health’s “Doctor to the Barrios” program.
In addition, we should highlight the crucial contributions of U.P. Manila’s National Institutes of Health to the primary health care system — not to mention medical research and the development of vaccines. Chancellor Domingo’s riveting account of how U.P. Manila’s medical researchers spearheaded the development of the hepatitis-B vaccine and crafted DOH’s health policy on mass immunization is a shining example of what U.P. does best. This solid scientific research is an aid to national policy-making that improves the lives of the Filipino people.
We should not overlook the fact that the U.P.-Philippine General Hospital serves more patients, mostly the indigent, than any other public or private hospital n the Philippines. As a teaching hospital, UP-PGH is home to the largest pool of highly trained and experienced medical specialists and allied health professionals in the country. This explains the high quality of training in medicine and the allied health professions at U.P. Manila. Parenthetically, the incipient attempt on the part of some UP-PGH officials to secede from U.P. is retrogressive move from the viewpoint of PGH’s growth and development as a national institution. The synergy between PGH and U.P. Manila’s research institutes and degree-granting units in the health sciences would be reduced, if not lost entirely, by the severance of this long-standing official partnership. I have argued that PGH’s ability to draw national support owes in part to the prestige of being associated with U.P. PGH accounts for nearly 30 per cent of U.P.’s entire budget. By going it alone, PGH risks being “privatized” which will derogate against its character as the country’s best hospital serving the tertiary medical needs of the poor.
UP has already developed expertise in agriculture, health, and engineering sciences. Now U.P. seeks to develop a fourth area to round out its capability-building program in the S & T fields. Being an archipelagic country on the Pacific rim, a large portion of the Philippines’ territory is waterbound. Therefore, development of scientific expertise in fisheries, marine science and oceanography is logical. Commercial and sustenance fishing are economically important activities for our people. It also contributes to the country’s food security. However, the threat of overfishing and resource depletion looms large. The programs being spearheaded by the College of Fisheries in U.P. Visayas and the Marine Science Institute in U.P. Diliman will put equal emphasis on optimal and sustainable exploitation of fisheries and marine resources. The conservation of the marine environment is a focus.
While fishing is the most visible aquatic commercial activity, other marine resources are equally important. These resources include economically valuable products such as carageenan. Unknown to many, the Marine Science Institute played a key role in developing our carageenan processing industry. The Philippines has been transformed from an exporter of raw sea weed to a principal world supplier of carageenan. In the future, the seas and the ocean beyond beckon as important sources of oil, minerals, and energy. Equally important, developing our capability in this sector will cement the nation’s sovereignty over our territorial waters, an expanded economical zone.
As for the humanities and the social sciences, U.P. has been traditionally strong in these fields. The liberal arts, social sciences, and the basic sciences are the core of a U.P. education. Thus, the strength of these disciplines determines the quality of undergraduate instruction in U.P. More importantly, the humanities and the social sciences influence the cultural moorings and worldview of our students, whatever profession they choose to take.
In U.P. Plan 2008, we envision the development of the various U.P. campuses into cultural centers. The main campus in Diliman will become a national cultural center and our autonomous and regional campuses, regional cultural centers. New construction on our existing venues for the performing arts, the visual arts, and film will begin. But our main assets as centers of cultural activity are people. These include the U.P. faculty, students and staff who have distinguished themselves before international and local audiences. Our artists-in-residence in music, literature, the performing arts, the visual arts, and film, and the participants of creative writing workshops face a critical audience that inspires them to do their best.
Moreover, U.P. intends to significantly participate in the national observance of the centennial of the Philippine republic next year. We have lined up a series of academic and cultural events. Chief of which is the sandaang taon, sandaang akda publishing project. This is a fitting expression of our traditional role as the national university of the Philippines: conserving and transmitting the best ideas and values that the Filipino culture has to offer for the edification of future generations.
As we gather for the 1997 U.P. Alumni Homecoming on the 89th year of the University, we have much reason for celebration and humility. But our celebration of U.P.’s hard-earned status as the country’s leading university must be tempered with the humbling realization that other national universities in the region, some much younger than our own, have overtaken us. Therefore, we ought to be challenged and motivated toward greater effort for U.P.’s sake and for the sake of the country that continues to count on U.P. as a national resource.
Toward this end, U.P. will continue to exercise its claim for national support commensurate with its status and achievement as the country’s premier institution of higher learning. The University has been relatively successful at generating government budgetary support through the years. We have asked our supporters and friends in Congress to draft a U.P. modernization bill. This will upgrade U.P.’s ability to support the country’s drive toward rapid economic growth and development in the 21st century.
In U.P. Plan 2008, we have defined economic nationalism as the unifying force for transforming the Philippines into a significant base of global production. We will support this by enhancing the nation’s ability to retain and attract the best students, faculty and staff, and to maintain the loyalty of its alumni. This requires the upgrading of its physical infrastructure such as remuneration, governance, and the climate for academic work. The latter refers to the observance and preservation of U.P.’s academic traditions and culture, that is, the pursuit of excellence, academic freedom, and advocacy.
Given the enormity of this challenge and the scarcity of public funds, we realize that relying on the government for the bulk of our funds may not be tenable over the long run. Hence, we are introducing innovative means of higher education finance. One such financing innovation is the development of U.P.’s idle land grants into revenue generating assets. Viewed from an insular perspective, the plans we have outlined above may seem excessively ambitious to some. But in the light of global realities and our people’s aspirations to build the nation they deserve, we can afford to do no less.