blackshama's commentary on Philippine issues

The University of the Philippines high school department (now known as the UP Integrated School) will be moved from its Katipunan Road site on the periphery of the Diliman campus to near the UP College of Education. The move has been talked about for years. Katipunan Road over the decades has been turned into an extremely busy highway and students have been in real danger of being run over (and indeed some have and a few have been fatal). Just for this reason alone, moving the school nearer to the university academic core is most sensible. However the site has sentimental reasons to generations of old UPIS grads. But a cursory look at the campus would suggest that time has done its work and a new building on a new site is best. But the University of the Philippines had not much the funds to rehabilitate the buildings (the "new" building is 35 years old!) and so any talk of relocation or renovation was just that talk. And here comes Ayala Corporation, just fresh from put...

New UP President Alfredo Pascual last Feb 10 took over the reins of the University of the Philippines in a simple ceremony in Quezon Hall.  Mr Pascual served until Feb 9, 2017.His speech is here . The theme of Mr Pascual's  speech focused on the never ending effort to raise the standards of the university, modernize its infrastructure, turn it into a competitive research university without compromising the university's reputation for teaching excellence. However Mr Pascual, a chemistry graduate but development banker by profession, spilled out the necessary numbers. It is no secret that the salaries of professors are abysmally low and definitely uncompetitive. The same is true for the loyal staff which are even more disadvantaged. The numbers include that to make the salaries really competitive (professors on average should get 100,000 pesos a month from the measly 25,000 or so at present), the UP should have an endowment of at least 8 billion pesos (that is about 181 mill...

The University Council of UP Diliman has deliberated on its resolution regarding Noynoy Aquino's budget cuts to state universities. Some interesting pieces of information emerged from the "academic puffball" to borrow a Harvard phrase, discussion UP needs an allocation of at least 30 B pesos a year for at least a decade if it aims at least start catching up with top Asian universities like NUS in Singapore, Beida in China or Todai in Japan. UP proposed an 18 B budget this year. The University will require about 18-20 B per year if it is to maintain its present standard. A significant percentage of this budget goes to the operation of the university's teaching hospital PGH. PGH is not just an ordinary teaching hospital with a few beds, it is the largest tertiary hospital in the country that services a lot of indigent patients (and trains the best physicians and surgeons!) But UP's budget averaged only between 6 B every year and now it has been cut by 1.39 B. ...

The unpleasant reality of President Benigno "Noynoy" Aquino III's 1.39 billion peso budget cut for next year has finally dawned on faculty, staff and students of the University of the Philippines , the Philippines' national university as defined by law. Administration officials have warned university constituents that the university will likely not hire anyone for next academic year. This includes non-academic staff (clerks, records examiners, department secretaries etc), research staff and faculty. This also means that professors who will retire at the end of this year won't be replaced by young assistant professors, research projects and programs can't hire new graduate students to work in the labs, and no new clerical staff will be hired. And we haven't even touched upon the subject of salary adjustments and promotions, which are even more likely to be cut or put on hold! This bodes ill for the university (and a "baptism of fire" for the new...