| Its first one hundred years saw the University of the Philippines rise into a complex, confident, and geographically extensive institution. It has grown into seven constituent universities strategically located in twelve campuses across the country. It offers 258 undergraduate and 438 graduate programs to almost 52,000 students. The scope and range of its course offerings include all disciplines, and it continues to lead the country in the quest for knowledge.
Already in its second century, UP is still a work in progress, its passion for the new and the different burning as bright as ever. But today it operates in an environment radically different from when it was founded in 1908.
A century of paradox
To consider the University in the larger context of the nation, interviews were conducted with some of UP’s former and present administrators.
This now networked and global world is one where ideas and information flow freely. “Our students are connected in many ways,” says Dr. Maria Serena I. Diokno, professor of history at the UP Diliman College of Social Sciences and Philosophy, and former Vice President for Academic Affairs. “Not always intellectually, but certainly they are aware of things that are going on elsewhere, whether it’s fashion, food, music—almost everything.”
Dr. Maria Serena I. Diokno
The world has also changed politically. “In its first 100 years, and even until now, UP has responded to a dominant national environment characterized by our people’s aspiration for political independence (primarily from the Americans) and mass-based economic progress. The rise and fall of communism/socialism in the second half of the century also dominated the scene,” points out UP Los Baños Chancellor Luis Rey Velasco. “Today, UP as an academic institution has to respond to the national environment in the context of globalization and internationalization, information explosion, a stronger science-driven understanding of the world and economic development, and global climate change.”
This is similar to UP Diliman Chancellor Sergio S. Cao’s view. Cao had previously served as Faculty Regent, Vice President for Finance, and University Registrar. He sees the University as facing a two-pronged imperative: our role as a public service university as explicitly stated in the new Charter and the demand for internationalization. “Our programs and research must be responsive to the needs of the nation, and especially our communities. At the same time, we must address the push toward internationalization to exchange knowledge and information with our academic counterparts abroad, and to enrich our service to our people.”
Velasco adds that interdependence, rather than independence, is fast becoming a necessity for progress. “Blending interdependence with our aspiration of an inward-looking nationalism is a challenge UP has to reckon with,” he says. “UP must provide the venue for articulation of this issue and how our nation shall respond in a forward-looking perspective.”
“Certainly, we are freer. People are more outspoken,” says Diokno. “There are still threats to our freedom—the massacre of journalists, questionable arrests, all kinds of subtle persecution of citizens. But, by and large, there is the environment of freedom.” It is an environment where secrecy is not much of an option even—or especially—for state officials as the demand for transparency in government is greater.
UPLB Chancellor Luis Rey Velasco
Yet there is no assurance that students, for all their technological sophistication, truly comprehend the developments taking place around them. “They still don’t read the newspapers and I don’t know if they go to the Internet to check on Philippine news,” notes Diokno. “This is a century of paradox. On the one hand, there are almost no technological barriers to understanding or knowing what’s going on. On the other hand, what kind of understanding is there?”
And this, according to her, is where UP should step in. It should be the business of the University to develop among its students an intellectual competency that allows them to find applications for the information they encounter—draw inferences from them, evaluate arguments, weigh evidence, and relate them to real-life events.
Given all that UP must do, Cao notes that the reality is that the University must compete with 110 state universities and colleges for its allocation of the national budget. He also points out that part of today’s environment is the worldwide trend of decreasing government subsidies for higher education. “Over the past few years, we have been getting barely half of what we actually need. Universities in China, Japan, the US, and Europe are experiencing cutbacks in their budgets, as well,” he says. “On the one hand, this is good because it decreases government’s hold on UP. But, on the other hand, it forces UP to raise funds from various other sources, including private organizations that may have their own research agendas.”
All that said, is UP prepared to meet the demands of the 21st century environment?
Changes in the Board
If Republic Act No. 9500, or the new UP Charter, is anything to go by, the University seems to be moving into its second century with a strong sense of purpose. The Charter introduced significant changes to facilitate the University’s performance of its academic functions and its commitment to serve the nation.
For UP Vice President for Legal Affairs Theodore O. Te, the changes in the composition of the Board of Regents (BOR) have brought about welcome developments in the system of governance in UP.
Under the old Charter, the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) Secretary was the chair of the Board and the UP President the vice chair. By implication, the former enjoyed some form of ascendancy over the latter which, according to Te, was anachronistic given the University’s nature as an autonomous institution. Under the new Charter, they now sit as co-chairs and share equal authority in presiding over the BOR, which is a collegial body, with no one having more than one vote.
Since the BOR is the highest policy-making body of the University, President-elect Aquino’s choice of regents is critical to UP’s effectively performing its role as the country’s only national university. The CHED Secretary must understand and be in fundamental agreement with this role and with UP’s mandate to provide public service. Likewise, President Aquino’s other appointees to the BOR should be people who have a stake in UP and understand how it functions.
The new Charter has also given the UP President a clearer and bigger role in governing the University. He or she is described in separate provisions as chief academic officer, chief executive officer, and chief operating officer. “The President is now clearly, operationally, the person with the governance function,” says Te. “The BOR exercises policy-making powers, but it is the President who sees to the day-to-day activities of UP.”
VP for Legal Affairs Theodore O. Te
Another major change is the inclusion of the Staff Regent, allowing for broader representation in the Board. “For me, it is a good experiment in the University’s governance,” says Te. “But in terms of operations, we have only the experience of Mr. Buboy Cabrera to guide us in evaluating the role and value of the Staff Regent in the Board. But Mr. Cabrera is so far one of a kind right now. So I do not want to evaluate him at the moment because there is very little to go with in terms of actual performance. Let him finish his term first.”
Under the Charter, the Staff Regent is expressly tasked with representing the full-time permanent research, extension, and professional staff (REPS) and administration personnel. He or she shall be chosen by the REPS and personnel from their ranks and serve for a term of two years. Similarly, the Faculty Regent is tasked with representing all the teaching personnel and the Student Regent the entire studentry of the UP System.
In fact, the sectoral regents represent all the members of the sector that voted for them. They must therefore have the capacity to transcend their personal and/or political agendas and must be cognizant of what the majority of their constituency thinks of particular issues. They are accountable to their constituents for how well they carry out their functions and how closely they represent the majority’s interests. It might even be useful to have the different sectors voice their opinions as to the performance ratings of their representatives.
The Charter also clarifies the roles of the BOR and the University Council. Each supreme in its area of jurisdiction, the BOR is vested with administrative and corporate powers while the UC is recognized as the highest academic body of each constituent university. As such, the BOR will have to act on certain matters upon the recommendation of the UC, e.g., the institution, merger, or abolition of academic programs; graduation of students and grant of honors; conferment of honorary degrees; and approval of the rules on student discipline.
These changes notwithstanding, Te thinks that the BOR is still driven by the individual persons occupying it. “Theoretically, every regent should have no vision other than the welfare of the University and that ideally should go hand in hand with the vision of the President. It is after all the President who is going to implement that vision,” he pointed out. “But because regents are chosen by their own constituencies, each of them comes in with his own vision and specific ideas. I think it creates a situation where we have different visions operating within one single Board.” Te finds nothing wrong with the diversity of ideas and personalities in the BOR. “I welcome the fact that they have different opinions,” he explains, “but at the end of the day, the regents should be able to come up with a single, clear vision or decision that this is what UP is all about.”
Velasco agrees that the members of the BOR, being tasked with formulating a strategic vision for the University and safeguarding its fundamental principles and values, must embrace and fully grasp the essence and spirit of a true University. “While being mindful of their mandate, these people must rise above sectoral issues so that critical decisions are made in the interest of UP,” he says. However, given that the seven autonomous campuses of UP are expanding tremendously, each having developed its own organizational and academic culture, he suggests that they be allowed to have their own BOR or policy-making body that is appreciative of their respective concerns. The president will ensure campus linkages and collaboration despite having their own policy-making bodies.
Meanwhile, Diokno says that “what we have to remember is that the BOR is composed of individuals and so are the officials of UP,” she elaborates. “So part of it is also learning to navigate one’s way around these personalities.” Ultimately, she adds, it is the regents who define their positions by their leadership, their practices, and the strength of their ideas as individuals and as a collective body. The Charter is merely a document which the University will have to shape and frame by its practices, beliefs, and ideas.
How then should UP breathe life into the provisions of its new Charter?
Money matters, fiscal autonomy
RA 9500 allows UP to generate its own income by fixing the tuition rates, leasing its land grants and other real properties, entering into joint ventures, and other means. Cao, however, clarifies that UP has enjoyed the same fiscal autonomy since the 1970s through an executive order issued by former President Ferdinand Marcos.
“What is new,” he says, “is that the Charter now institutionalizes restrictions to how we may generate revenues through our assets.” Cao points to Paragraph C of Section 22, for example, that states that the BOR may plan, design, approve, and/or cause the implementation of land leases. However, such mechanisms and arrangements must sustain and protect the environment in accordance with law and be exclusive of the academic core zone of the UP campuses. Similarly, paragraph E of the same section allows UP to enter into joint ventures provided that it will not result in the alienation of the real properties of the University.
More restrictions are spelled out in Section 23, which provides for safeguards on the disposition of UP assets. It states that the lease for more than five years of the assets of the University is subject to several conditions and procedures, such as subjecting the transaction to a competitive and public bidding. Moreover, prior consultations with and concurrence of third-party experts are required.
UPD Chancellor Sergio S. Cao
If UP enters into a contract or engages in a transaction involving an amount of more than P50 million, it has to have the approval of at least three-fourths of all the members of the BOR. This particular provision, says Cao, can be tricky. “Under the old Charter, the Board is composed of 12 members and it is clear that you need nine votes to come up with the required three-fourths vote,” he explains. “But now we only have 11 Board members, which means three people voting against a contract, transaction, or policy is enough to block approval of measures, however beneficial they may be to the University.”
In many foreign universities, according to Velasco, subsidiary companies have been created to deal with the same constraints that UP is facing now. “This strategy has proven to be very successful without compromising the ideals of the university,” he says. “Take for example the Silicon Valley in California, where commercialization of university technologies led to further scholarly research and expansion of knowledge.”
Velasco is aware that there are certain sectors in UP that are opposed to the supposed commercialization of UP assets. “They may have valid concerns but adopting proper guidelines to avoid compromising the noble goals of UP should nullify these concerns,” he says. “For instance, there should be a determined percentage of the University income that should be allocated to financially supporting more students in terms of scholarships and support to student research. In this area, UP shall be able to creatively adopt applicable principles of social entrepreneurship where business and social responsibilities move hand in hand.”
In addition, Cao says, “We must raise research funds from private sources and our assets, as well as compete for available research grants worldwide. The truth is that academic leadership now does include a fund-raising function.”
Creating adequate knowledge
Given the new environment in which it operates, Diokno points out that UP should give importance to its accountability to the public. “By accountability to the public I do not, by any means, imply a diminution of our autonomy to make decisions on academic matters like what programs to offer, which campus to open, who to hire, what positions to create. We certainly have the prerogative to make those decisions autonomously,” she says. “By accountability to the public, I am referring to the question of how we play out our role in the life of the nation, given that 80 percent to 90 percent of our expenditures come from the government.”
Part of this accountability means that UP should be able to separate its public role from its academic role, although these are closely related to one another. According to Diokno, the academic role deals with the question of excellence, maintaining the highest possible standards in all of UP’s functions—teaching, research, and extension services. And as a university, its primary function is to create knowledge.
UP, however, is not producing enough knowledge, and Diokno sees the prevailing culture as part of the reason. “Faculty members find many reasons—heavy teaching load, low salary, etc.—for not doing research, realities that no doubt affect our academic life,” she says. “But Indian professors are worse paid than we are, they are grossly underpaid, but they publish. Their academic culture is deeply entrenched. You should see their work. Some of the best theoreticians in history now are in Indian academics.”
She further relates that during her term as Vice President for Academic Affairs, one of the things she had to grapple with was the level of research output in the University. Rather than consider sanctions, the Nemenzo administration combined a package of incentives and standards to help raise the level of research. These included financial incentives and awards for publications in all the disciplines and grants for postgraduate studies abroad. At the same time, faculty members had to publish locally or internationally as a prerequisite to tenure or promotion.
Seeing the necessity of augmenting faculty income to encourage research and creative work, the incentives initiated by the Nemenzo administration were continued by President Roman and her team. In addition to this, they introduced the Scientist Productivity System, as well as the Artist Productivity System. Various new grants were also introduced by the constituent universities over the past six years.
Diokno also underscores the University’s responsibility to operate beyond the needs of the market. “[This] means we do not offer programs in order to respond to what the market demands. If we did, then certain programs like mine, History, would probably have to be closed given the small number of our majors. We never meet our quota through the UP College Admission Test,” she says. “But as the National University, our role is to offer the best programs in light of our country’s needs. Some programs may not be marketable but we need them. Filipinos need to know our history, culture, and language.” It is in this sense that UP’s academic role is tightly intertwined with its public role. It offers programs which are less about market demands and more about the enrichment of public life. In other words, it offers courses with the interest of the nation in mind.
Paradigm of nationalism
Whereas, “UP has provided leadership in shaping our national consciousness with a strong flavor of ‘defensive and protective nationalism’” (Constantino, Leticia 1980), for Velasco, UP should now provide a mature leadership in evolving a productive paradigm of nationalism. This involves educating Filipinos into being national leaders who are not mere technocrats but, more importantly, are responsible citizens with integrity and genuine concern for the people. “It should be noted, however, that the various campuses of UP being a pluralistic community have responded differently to these challenges,” he says. “UP Los Baños and UP Manila, perhaps because of the nature of their academic disciplines, have silently responded by going to the barrios. On the other hand, the younger UP Diliman campus, because of its proximity to the national political arena, has responded by being the ‘conscience of the people’ in national political debates.”
And in further pursuit of the University’s mandate to serve the nation, he says that academic freedom is one UP tradition that must be kept and strengthened. “But we must practice it with due diligence and with open-mindedness,” he points out. “UP must educate students to practice academic freedom in pursuit of truth and in discovering knowledge.”
Thus, he continues, it is critical that UP be a research university with sound practice of science. “The role of research cannot be overemphasized in ensuring quality education in the university. Skill and knowledge in the scientific enterprise are indispensable aspects of education,” he explains.
But academic freedom, he warns, can also be dangerous because it fosters individualism. “It must then be balanced with a sense of service to our people,” he says. “This is the reason we in UP Los Baños prefer to be called Iskolar Para Sa Bayan. This is a reminder to all that we must practice academic freedom without losing sight of the fact that we are part of a broader community of Filipinos and that we are in UP to serve the nation. It is in this context that UP must take the lead in evolving nationalism among us.”
Same values, different rules
Cao believes that UP should hold on to the same values of excellence, leadership, and service which have guided it in the past 100 years. However, it must adjust its policies and rules to make these values work in its new environment.
If UP wants to strengthen its research capacity, for example, he suggests that the University adjust its hiring policy to make it consistent with such objective. This would involve having faculty members on two tracks: tenure-tra+ck and contractual, “say for periods of five years. Contractual faculty members may teach the service courses. They are very good at teaching and do not want to do research or creative work. Tenure-track faculty will do research or creative work and apply for tenure.”
He also says UP should encourage cross-disciplinary collaboration among its faculty members. He explains: “As a public service university, we should be able to address issues and concerns that affect our society. More often than not, societal problems inherently require a multi-disciplinary approach. Poverty, for example, is a complex issue that can be best addressed by combining the expertise of those in the social sciences, applied sciences, and perhaps even of those in the arts as well.”
Given its limited resources, UP should also find a way to rationalize its formula for allocating research grants among the faculty members. “If we give equal grants to everyone, each would be getting an amount too minimal to cover the entire cost of his or her research,” he says. “More points should probably be given to those who have already proven their capacity to do and actually publish their research.”
The same principle may be applied to the proposed adjustment of UP salary to make it competitive with the going rates in the private industry. Under the new Charter, UP is allowed to give its employees more than what the Salary Standardization Law provides but the excess will have to come from its own income. UP generates an annual income of around P930 million. The salaries of the University’s administrative staff cost around the same figure. “This puts us in a difficult position,” says Cao. “If we implement an across-the-board increase, what we would all be getting is a negligible amount, which defeats the purpose of raising our salaries to be at par with industry rates. But, if we implement a merit-based or length-of-service-based increase, this may not sit well with some members of the community.”
As an institution, UP pushed its constituent universities to move forward together. Most of its policies are applied uniformly system-wide. It submits to Congress one budget proposal to cover all of its seven campuses.
Cao believes, that while this may not be a popular idea, it is time UP recognized the differences of its constituent universities and considered them as independent entities. “Perhaps a culture of competition among our campuses may be good for us,” he says. “Our constituent universities have different needs and therefore should come up with their individual budget proposals. We also have different mandates and therefore should be ranked as individual universities.”
Internationalization, what’s in it for UP?
In a networked environment, UP will do well to be open to and comfortable with the free flow of information and ideas. Velasco says linkages and collaboration with foreign academic institutions are essential for an academic institution. “We have in UP many faculty members and researchers who have been educated overseas and they have greatly enriched the intellectuality and academic culture in the University,” he explains. “UP must consistently benchmark with foreign universities so that we can learn from their experiences. But we should choose only practices that are relevant to UP. This should also be an opportunity to test the soundness and robustness of our own practice of critical thinking and science.”
“We also hope to bring foreign experts here in UP but, aside from the fact that we have limited resources, our law does not allow us to give them tenure,” says Cao. “So we need to be creative with arrangements that will allow us to internationalize. One such way is through collaborative research projects that may be implemented online and through video conferencing. Such collaborative projects will enable UP researchers to have access to data, equipment, resources, that are otherwise unavailable to us because we may not have the resources to acquire them.”
While Diokno supports internationalization, she says that the University should determine the purpose, control the modality, and define the extent of its foray into the global academic community. “If we want to internationalize, my first question is why? What do we hope to gain? How do we accomplish our objectives? In other words, we should be interested in what UP will gain from the experience,” she explains. “I think it would be good for American students to come to UP and learn Philippine history from our point of view, especially how we look at the American colonial period,” she says.
“We should keep our collaborations as close as possible to our objectives as the National University,” Cao says. “When we work on science and technology, for example, it should be done for national development and within the context of Philippine culture.”
Velasco notes that national interest must naturally come first but internationalization does not necessarily have to be viewed as being contradictory to UP’s efforts toward nationalism. “In fact, internationalization should give us the opportunity to strengthen and feel confident of our nationality,” he says. “It appears that those who have lived overseas for some years and have been exposed to other cultures develop a stronger sense of love for country and people, and a better appreciation and understanding of our own culture.”
This way, internationalization does not have to be in diametrical opposition to nationalism. They are parallel goals the National University can, and should, pursue concurrently. |
Dear Elizabeth 