physicist
Aug 15, 2008, 03:39 PM
I found the speech below extremely instructive about the hurdles our universities will have to overcome in order to become really successful. It's a bit lengthy, but it's really worth reading.
I think it should give one a better perspective on what a university ought to be in a developing country. And consequently, it also offers insight into how our universities should perhaps recalibrate their goals, and their metrics for success. (This, if anything, should at least lessen the bickering that goes on here about how this-and-that school is better than all the rest.)
I'm especially hoping that this gets to fellow Filipino academics who visit this forum, whether from the Philippines or abroad.
Your thoughts are most welcome.
***************************************************
(The speech below was delivered by Fr. Bienvenido F. Nebres, SJ, for The UP Centennial Lecture Series “UP: View from outside” at the Science Hall, Philippine General Hospital, July 31, 2008. Fr. Nebres earned his PhD in Mathematics at Stanford University, and is currently the president of Ateneo de Manila University.)
Building internationally competitive institutions and overcoming poverty: Can these two paths converge?
My warmest congratulations to the University of the Philippines as you celebrate your centennial. The last one hundred years have truly been years of great achievement by the UP and by your alumni in so many different walks of life.
I had a conversation with Dr. Emerlinda Roman, President of the University of the Philippines, a few weeks ago on my centennial lecture. She mentioned that the science and engineering students at the UP today are about 50% of the student body, which is a marvelous ratio in our S&T challenged culture. The University of the Philippines has been truly the dominant university in our country in the field of Science and Technology: national scientists, academicians, etc. I have worked over the years with many UP colleagues in the National Academy of Science and Technology and in various endeavors to strengthen Science and Technology in our country.
Much has been done to strengthen Science and Technology in the country since the 1970s. The University of the Philippines has played a key role in these developments. The next frontier is linking science, engineering and industry, symbolized by the rise of the UP North Science and Technology Park. The goal is to develop S&T based industries and to be part of the Knowledge Economy. What will building this new system entail? In conversations with science and technology colleagues, I have often cited two examples which illustrate the tasks and challenges ahead of us.
In our pursuit of S&T-based industries and technological competitiveness, we often speak of India as a model. What we academics tend to see are the Indian Institutes of Technology and the Tata Institutes. They are indeed important and we have to strive to reach their levels. But what we fail to see is equally important. I often remind colleagues that the IT revolution in India had small beginnings a few decades ago. Much of it started because Indian scientists and engineers in the U.S. saw an opportunity in the growing software development needs of US companies. They started going to these companies and telling them: “We can meet your software needs cheaper and faster.” They then outsourced the development to colleagues in India. They were integrators and entrepreneurs, they connected technology capability in India to markets in the U.S. Key to the development of the great ICT industries in India were the links built between markets in the U.S. and technical capabilities in India.
In a recent meeting with the technical working groups for the Congressional Commission on Science and Technology Education, I also reminded the group of a Businessweek article on Silicon Valley a few years ago. The article pointed out that the success of Silicon Valley owed not just to the techies, but to the seamless structure between the technology innovators, the venture capitalists and the legal and regulatory framework that distributed both profit and risk. This allowed innovators to fail and remain standing so they could try again. As we all know, many of the great successes came after two or three earlier failures.
There are thus many pieces that have to come seamlessly together if we are to achieve our goals. How can these pieces come together? What I can contribute to this journey to the next frontier is to share my experience and that of many UP colleagues in earlier stages of our journey to develop Science and Technology in our country.
The UP-Ateneo-De La Salle PhD Consortium
In the early 1970’s, we only had two PhD’s in mathematics, myself and Dr. Favila of UP. A few years later, Dr. Jose Marasigan (of Ateneo) joined us. The situation was no better in physics, a little better in chemistry. What started the journey was a group of Filipino scientists, who came together to do something about the state of mathematics and science PhD programs and research. Our analysis of the situation was:
- we had good B.S. programs
- the strategy of sending them all for PhD’s abroad was not working. First, few returned. Also, because they studied in so many different universities on such diverse research topics, they could not build research groups at home.
- We thus decided to set up the local PhD programs, with a sandwich component.
First, we needed a framework of cooperation between our three universities. Dr. Melecio Magno, who was then Academic Vice-President of UP, helped us set up the UP-Ateneo-DLSU consortium.
Second, we had to get funding so that PhD students could study full time. We first got the funding from NEDA with the support of Dr. Tito Mijares. Later, NSDB under Dr. Melecio Magno took over.
Third, since we had so few scientists at home, we needed international support for the high-level coursework and research. We thus designed the sandwich programs and engaged colleagues from abroad. It began simply with good friends from Singapore helping us with arrangements and working out finances so our meager local funds would suffice. Then scientific colleagues in Australia and Japan helped us access support from the Australian Universities International Development Program and the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science.
If you reflect on the process, you can see a group of Filipino science colleagues widening their network – with university administration, science funding agencies, colleagues and institutions from abroad. It was this network of science colleagues and friends, who built the needed pieces – the PhD curriculum, delivery of the courses, research topics – and put the pieces together with the support of many.
I often tell the story from Professor Koji Shiga, who was the first visitor in the mathematics exchange program of JSPS. He told me a few years after his first visit here that just before he came, he got a phone call from Professor Kawada, who told him, “You are going to the Philippines. You will be running a seminar on Complex Manifolds. You should prepare your lectures well. But your real first task is to make friends. This is going to be a long-term exchange. And a long-term exchange can only work if it is on a strong base of friendship.”
Since today is the Feast of our Jesuit Founder, St. Ignatius, allow me to inject a Jesuit aside. In 2006 the Jesuits celebrated an important Jubilee, the 500th anniversary of the birth of St. Francis Xavier and Blessed Peter Faber and the 450th anniversary of the death of St. Ignatius. Ignatius, Francis and Peter met as fellow students in the University of Paris in the late 1520s, 1530s. They actually shared the same dorm or apartment. Thus 2006 was a time for us to remember that the Jesuit Order was established by a group of university friends. The group would grow to ten, our First Fathers, who banded together and called themselves “Amigos en el Senor”, “Friends in the Lord.”
The Engineering and Science Education Project (ESEP)
After the EDSA revolution, we realized that we needed to move to a next level, if science and technology was to continue to develop in the country. Beyond PhD programs, we needed better labs and equipment, better libraries, PhDs and Postdocs in a broader range of areas. We needed to move to other sciences, to engineering and to science and math in secondary education. A network of science colleagues embarked on what would become the Engineering and Science Education Project (ESEP), the largest scale project yet undertaken for Science and Technology education in the country.
It was almost aborted at the start, because it ran into conflicts on fiscal and educational policy with NEDA. NEDA held the position that the State should not borrow for higher education, because while basic education has a public return, higher education only has a private return and so should not be supported from ODA. One can go on and on about the challenges that had to be met: engaging national government agencies, the World Bank, a larger network of universities, high schools, and so forth.
The Project Advisory Group, composed of three local scientists and two foreign scientists together with key officials of the DOST, was formed to help guide the project. Officially, its role was to be advisory and the actual management and running would be with the DOST. But ESEP was trailblazing new territory for the Philippines: procuring very sophisticated equipment, finding scientists and laboratories abroad for PhD students and postdocs, working with diverse agencies. Much of it was beyond the experience of the DOST staff. The PAG had to mediate these new experiences and territory – till the knowledge and expertise was acquired by the DOST staff.
The key point I want to make is that what got us far was a group of science colleagues, committed to making a difference.
In a paper I wrote for a conference in Khartoum in 1978, I pointed out that when you look at the development of anything great, say the art and sculpture and the great cathedrals of the Middle Ages or the rise of the sciences in modern Europe, it came from two poles: the rise of genius (a Michaelangelo, a Bernini, or a Newton) and patrons, leaders of society, who supported and created a path for their genius.
If we are to move to the next level, beyond PhD’s in science and research papers to strong links with industry and actual creation and innovation that will move our economy up the value chain, we will need individuals and groups who make it their task to bring us to this next level.
This should include alumni and friends abroad. I have often retold an experience meeting a young Chinese woman on a trip to San Francisco. She had done a Masters in Finance at Stanford and was working for an Investment Company in San Jose. She was coming back from Shanghai, because one of her commitments was to teach one month a year in Shanghai and pass on her knowledge. I was even more struck when she said that one of her priorities was to get investments for an industrial park beside her home village.
UP has many distinguished alumni in the U.S. and other foreign countries. It is great that they are contributing to UP’s endowment for the UP Centennial. But I think the bigger contribution would be if they could do what the Indians in the U.S. did many years ago and what recent Chinese migrants are doing: create opportunities abroad for the Philippines, be entrepreneurs for the Philippines. In this globally interconnected world, success will go to the country and culture that is able to establish worldwide networks that create competitive advantage.
If the UP is to take the lead in S&T based industry development, it is important to attend to graduate education and research in S&T, but it is equally important that individuals and groups emerge who will bring the different pieces together: technology innovators, business, legal and regulatory framework, Filipinos and friends abroad who will create opportunities and markets for us.
Closing the Poverty Gap
The first part of my presentation shared some of my views on the challenges of the UP as a national university in attaining levels of excellence and international competitiveness in science and technology. The next question is Excellence and International Competitiveness for what and for whom? What does it do for UP’s stakeholders? This is certainly good for UP’s alumni, faculty, students – it enhances the value of their UP degrees, their UP affiliation, it opens doors for them. But UP prides itself on being a national university, on your students being iskolar ng bayan. So, bayan is a stakeholder. What does this do for the bayan?
Let me begin with a video clip: (clip of Lupang Pangako 2003 shown)
Amartya Sen, in an article in the New York times a couple of years ago, says: “To build a country, build a schoolhouse. I am aware that when I argue that basic education for all can transform the miserable world in which we live, I sound a little like a Victorian gentlewoman delivering her favorite recipe for progress. As it happens, however, extensive empirical studies have demonstrated the critical role of basic education in economic and social development in Europe and North America as well as in Asia, Africa and Latin America.”
This dream from Amartya Sen is possible. Under the leadership of a wonderful principal, with the support of the community, and the responsiveness of the City Mayor, Lupang Pangako has changed.
(Video clip of Lupang Pangako 2008 shown.)
As the story of Lupang Pangako illustrates, success is possible. Ateneo started working with first 4, then 8 of the poorest grade schools in Quezon City several years ago. When we started, their overall scores in the NAT were in the 40% or 50% bracket and they ranked number 80 or 90 out of 96 schools in Quezon City. Lupang Pangako now ranks number 13, Payatas B number 6, Patayas C number 5. All have improved. A year or so ago, Ateneo committed to help improve all the public elementary and high schools in Quezon City.
Our experience is that it will take the effort of all sectors of society to rise to this challenge. The DepEd is essential. Local Governments are essential. The principal and the community, above all, are essential.
But universities can make a difference.
But here lies a deep problem. As the title of my presentation indicates, it will not be easy for us to bring together our pursuit of academic competitiveness and the task of improving public education. This was brought home to me in a very stark way in a recent symposium I attended.
In March of this year I was invited to present a paper at the Centennial of the International Commission on Mathematical Instruction in Rome on mathematics education in developing countries. I spoke in particular on the Philippine experience and a major part of my report was on the experience of the Third Elementary Education Project, the work we do in Payatas and that of Synergeia Foundation in ARMM.
During the discussion and open forum, however, the questions were all about how our work could contribute to establishing mathematics education as a scientific discipline and how it could lead to research and international publications. In other words, they were primarily interested in how this promoted our particular discipline of mathematics education. At that point, I realized that there was a serious disconnect between my own concerns and those of my scientific colleagues. We were on parallel tracks and as the symposium went on, I realized that the concerns of mathematics education as a scientific discipline and the concerns of improving children’s mathematics performance on a national scale, were on divergent paths.
So when I ask in my title whether the path towards international competitiveness and overcoming poverty can converge, it is because from my experience, they actually diverge. The path towards international competitiveness leads us to outstanding scientists, international recognition, gives us great prestige. But it leaves the task of overcoming poverty untouched.
On the other hand, if one focuses on the task of overcoming poverty, one finds that one must engage in many things, like working with local governments, organizing people, etc., etc. These are not disciplinal endeavors and thus do not lend themselves to a research project, with clear methodologies, whose results can be published in internationally recognized journals.
This divide is not easy to bridge. The difficulty is not due to any lack of good will or desire on our part. They are rooted in the cultures of universities and academic disciplines and in the institutional organization of the modern university. There are two ways we can use to understand the difficulty.
The first is from Howard Gardner in his latest book “Five Minds for the Future”. He describes the first two minds as the Analytical Mind and the Synthetic Mind.
The analytical mind breaks down problems into its different components, masters one or the other of these components and creates new knowledge about them. This is the mind we focus on the most in universities, the mind that does groundbreaking research and publishes respected scholarship.
The synthetic mind, on the other hand, brings together knowledge from disparate disciplines and from expertise beyond the academe to solve a particular problem or to build something new. It is the mind of an entrepreneur like Ted Turner, who built CNN, of Bill Gates, who built Microsoft, of great leaders in the world.
While we need the research and deeper knowledge coming from analytical minds to understand the different facets of our poverty problem, we need equally the capabilities of the synthetic mind to put together the various components needed to make progress on the problem.
But educating the synthetic mind is beyond any particular academic discipline. It is thus difficult to find a secure place for it in the structure of the modern university, which is discipline-based.
The second way to understand the difficulty of bringing together our role in becoming research universities, on the one hand, and engaging poverty on the other, I spoke about in a recent faculty address at the Ateneo de Manila. I referred to a book by a noted Jesuit historian, Fr. John O’Malley, about the Four Cultures in the modern Western-inspired university. The two most relevant for us are, first, the culture of research and analysis and creation of new knowledge, the culture coming from Plato and Aristotle and the culture of the modern research university. The second is focused on preparing good leaders for society, leaders for the common good, the humanistic culture coming from Isocrates and the schools, The goal of the first is Truth; the second, the Common Good. They are both needed, but live uneasily with each other. The first culture considers the second as fuzzy and non-rigorous. The second sees the first as often irrelevant to the real needs of society.
The metrics for the first culture are clear: research and publications in internationally respected journals. The metrics for the second are less easy to capture: institutions and leaders, who actually build the common good.
Howard Gardner asks how we might educate the synthetic mind. One approach he gives is that in addition to the dominant task of the modern research university of strong disciplinal focus and the education of future researchers, the university should also create “educational programs directed specifically at certain individuals of promise, leaders for tomorrow. Chief executives and general managers are expected to be able to see the big picture – to look beyond their own background and specialization; to understand the various components in their constituency . . . to think systemically about what is working, what is not working, and how goals can be more effectively achieved. . . . Perhaps as educator Vartan Gregorian has suggested, we need a specialization in becoming a generalist. Such a specialization would target promising candidates and devote resources towards the enhancement of synthesizing capabilities.”
I would imagine that an institution such as France’s Ecole Nationale d’Administration, which takes candidates in their middle or late twenties (just 100 of them a year) and puts them through a rigorous multi-disciplinary training for two years and then assigns them to key leadership positions in the country is such an institution.
I would like to end with tasks I would ask such leaders to prioritize, should the UP or other universities in our country decide to focus on the education of such leaders.
Just last week Dr. Pepe Abueva sent me a copy of his book, “Reinventing U.P. as the National University: Learning for Truth, Leadership and Social Transformation.” Dr. Abueva and I are now in a Presidential Task Force on Education, part of whose major focus is to work towards improving retention rates and academic achievement in our public elementary and high schools. We look forward to a day when we can truly say that every Filipino child has the opportunity to have a good elementary and high school education. We are far from this goal. The latest statistics say that of every 100 pupils entering Grade 1, only 56 finish grade school and only 30 finish high school. Achievement rates have improved for elementary school. But achievement rates for high school continue to be an average of below 50%. I believe that Social Transformation is not possible for any country with such dismal basic education results.
The first task I would give to these future leaders would be to set annual targets for improving retention rates, completion rates and achievement scores for our elementary and high school system.
Secondly, for technical and higher education in our country, my colleagues tell me that typically for every 100 interviewees for jobs in the Business Process Outsourcing companies, they are able to hire 6. This is just one stark example of the mismatch between higher education and the employment world. Our Task Force is working with former UP Colleagues, Dr. Ester Garcia and Dr. Olive Caoili of University of the East, Dr. Cristina Padolina of Centro Escolar University and others to improve links and relevance between higher education and job opportunities.
This is the second task I would give these future leaders. Improve the links between higher education and the leadership and employment needs of agriculture, business and industry.
I have often quoted a Japanese colleague who told me that they believe that a country can march only as fast as its slower members. Whatever pride UP and other leading universities in our country may take in our achievements, the Philippines will not march at our pace. It will march at the pace of the public elementary and high schools.
Love for our country and our people invites us to do what we can to march to the future with them.
I think it should give one a better perspective on what a university ought to be in a developing country. And consequently, it also offers insight into how our universities should perhaps recalibrate their goals, and their metrics for success. (This, if anything, should at least lessen the bickering that goes on here about how this-and-that school is better than all the rest.)
I'm especially hoping that this gets to fellow Filipino academics who visit this forum, whether from the Philippines or abroad.
Your thoughts are most welcome.
***************************************************
(The speech below was delivered by Fr. Bienvenido F. Nebres, SJ, for The UP Centennial Lecture Series “UP: View from outside” at the Science Hall, Philippine General Hospital, July 31, 2008. Fr. Nebres earned his PhD in Mathematics at Stanford University, and is currently the president of Ateneo de Manila University.)
Building internationally competitive institutions and overcoming poverty: Can these two paths converge?
My warmest congratulations to the University of the Philippines as you celebrate your centennial. The last one hundred years have truly been years of great achievement by the UP and by your alumni in so many different walks of life.
I had a conversation with Dr. Emerlinda Roman, President of the University of the Philippines, a few weeks ago on my centennial lecture. She mentioned that the science and engineering students at the UP today are about 50% of the student body, which is a marvelous ratio in our S&T challenged culture. The University of the Philippines has been truly the dominant university in our country in the field of Science and Technology: national scientists, academicians, etc. I have worked over the years with many UP colleagues in the National Academy of Science and Technology and in various endeavors to strengthen Science and Technology in our country.
Much has been done to strengthen Science and Technology in the country since the 1970s. The University of the Philippines has played a key role in these developments. The next frontier is linking science, engineering and industry, symbolized by the rise of the UP North Science and Technology Park. The goal is to develop S&T based industries and to be part of the Knowledge Economy. What will building this new system entail? In conversations with science and technology colleagues, I have often cited two examples which illustrate the tasks and challenges ahead of us.
In our pursuit of S&T-based industries and technological competitiveness, we often speak of India as a model. What we academics tend to see are the Indian Institutes of Technology and the Tata Institutes. They are indeed important and we have to strive to reach their levels. But what we fail to see is equally important. I often remind colleagues that the IT revolution in India had small beginnings a few decades ago. Much of it started because Indian scientists and engineers in the U.S. saw an opportunity in the growing software development needs of US companies. They started going to these companies and telling them: “We can meet your software needs cheaper and faster.” They then outsourced the development to colleagues in India. They were integrators and entrepreneurs, they connected technology capability in India to markets in the U.S. Key to the development of the great ICT industries in India were the links built between markets in the U.S. and technical capabilities in India.
In a recent meeting with the technical working groups for the Congressional Commission on Science and Technology Education, I also reminded the group of a Businessweek article on Silicon Valley a few years ago. The article pointed out that the success of Silicon Valley owed not just to the techies, but to the seamless structure between the technology innovators, the venture capitalists and the legal and regulatory framework that distributed both profit and risk. This allowed innovators to fail and remain standing so they could try again. As we all know, many of the great successes came after two or three earlier failures.
There are thus many pieces that have to come seamlessly together if we are to achieve our goals. How can these pieces come together? What I can contribute to this journey to the next frontier is to share my experience and that of many UP colleagues in earlier stages of our journey to develop Science and Technology in our country.
The UP-Ateneo-De La Salle PhD Consortium
In the early 1970’s, we only had two PhD’s in mathematics, myself and Dr. Favila of UP. A few years later, Dr. Jose Marasigan (of Ateneo) joined us. The situation was no better in physics, a little better in chemistry. What started the journey was a group of Filipino scientists, who came together to do something about the state of mathematics and science PhD programs and research. Our analysis of the situation was:
- we had good B.S. programs
- the strategy of sending them all for PhD’s abroad was not working. First, few returned. Also, because they studied in so many different universities on such diverse research topics, they could not build research groups at home.
- We thus decided to set up the local PhD programs, with a sandwich component.
First, we needed a framework of cooperation between our three universities. Dr. Melecio Magno, who was then Academic Vice-President of UP, helped us set up the UP-Ateneo-DLSU consortium.
Second, we had to get funding so that PhD students could study full time. We first got the funding from NEDA with the support of Dr. Tito Mijares. Later, NSDB under Dr. Melecio Magno took over.
Third, since we had so few scientists at home, we needed international support for the high-level coursework and research. We thus designed the sandwich programs and engaged colleagues from abroad. It began simply with good friends from Singapore helping us with arrangements and working out finances so our meager local funds would suffice. Then scientific colleagues in Australia and Japan helped us access support from the Australian Universities International Development Program and the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science.
If you reflect on the process, you can see a group of Filipino science colleagues widening their network – with university administration, science funding agencies, colleagues and institutions from abroad. It was this network of science colleagues and friends, who built the needed pieces – the PhD curriculum, delivery of the courses, research topics – and put the pieces together with the support of many.
I often tell the story from Professor Koji Shiga, who was the first visitor in the mathematics exchange program of JSPS. He told me a few years after his first visit here that just before he came, he got a phone call from Professor Kawada, who told him, “You are going to the Philippines. You will be running a seminar on Complex Manifolds. You should prepare your lectures well. But your real first task is to make friends. This is going to be a long-term exchange. And a long-term exchange can only work if it is on a strong base of friendship.”
Since today is the Feast of our Jesuit Founder, St. Ignatius, allow me to inject a Jesuit aside. In 2006 the Jesuits celebrated an important Jubilee, the 500th anniversary of the birth of St. Francis Xavier and Blessed Peter Faber and the 450th anniversary of the death of St. Ignatius. Ignatius, Francis and Peter met as fellow students in the University of Paris in the late 1520s, 1530s. They actually shared the same dorm or apartment. Thus 2006 was a time for us to remember that the Jesuit Order was established by a group of university friends. The group would grow to ten, our First Fathers, who banded together and called themselves “Amigos en el Senor”, “Friends in the Lord.”
The Engineering and Science Education Project (ESEP)
After the EDSA revolution, we realized that we needed to move to a next level, if science and technology was to continue to develop in the country. Beyond PhD programs, we needed better labs and equipment, better libraries, PhDs and Postdocs in a broader range of areas. We needed to move to other sciences, to engineering and to science and math in secondary education. A network of science colleagues embarked on what would become the Engineering and Science Education Project (ESEP), the largest scale project yet undertaken for Science and Technology education in the country.
It was almost aborted at the start, because it ran into conflicts on fiscal and educational policy with NEDA. NEDA held the position that the State should not borrow for higher education, because while basic education has a public return, higher education only has a private return and so should not be supported from ODA. One can go on and on about the challenges that had to be met: engaging national government agencies, the World Bank, a larger network of universities, high schools, and so forth.
The Project Advisory Group, composed of three local scientists and two foreign scientists together with key officials of the DOST, was formed to help guide the project. Officially, its role was to be advisory and the actual management and running would be with the DOST. But ESEP was trailblazing new territory for the Philippines: procuring very sophisticated equipment, finding scientists and laboratories abroad for PhD students and postdocs, working with diverse agencies. Much of it was beyond the experience of the DOST staff. The PAG had to mediate these new experiences and territory – till the knowledge and expertise was acquired by the DOST staff.
The key point I want to make is that what got us far was a group of science colleagues, committed to making a difference.
In a paper I wrote for a conference in Khartoum in 1978, I pointed out that when you look at the development of anything great, say the art and sculpture and the great cathedrals of the Middle Ages or the rise of the sciences in modern Europe, it came from two poles: the rise of genius (a Michaelangelo, a Bernini, or a Newton) and patrons, leaders of society, who supported and created a path for their genius.
If we are to move to the next level, beyond PhD’s in science and research papers to strong links with industry and actual creation and innovation that will move our economy up the value chain, we will need individuals and groups who make it their task to bring us to this next level.
This should include alumni and friends abroad. I have often retold an experience meeting a young Chinese woman on a trip to San Francisco. She had done a Masters in Finance at Stanford and was working for an Investment Company in San Jose. She was coming back from Shanghai, because one of her commitments was to teach one month a year in Shanghai and pass on her knowledge. I was even more struck when she said that one of her priorities was to get investments for an industrial park beside her home village.
UP has many distinguished alumni in the U.S. and other foreign countries. It is great that they are contributing to UP’s endowment for the UP Centennial. But I think the bigger contribution would be if they could do what the Indians in the U.S. did many years ago and what recent Chinese migrants are doing: create opportunities abroad for the Philippines, be entrepreneurs for the Philippines. In this globally interconnected world, success will go to the country and culture that is able to establish worldwide networks that create competitive advantage.
If the UP is to take the lead in S&T based industry development, it is important to attend to graduate education and research in S&T, but it is equally important that individuals and groups emerge who will bring the different pieces together: technology innovators, business, legal and regulatory framework, Filipinos and friends abroad who will create opportunities and markets for us.
Closing the Poverty Gap
The first part of my presentation shared some of my views on the challenges of the UP as a national university in attaining levels of excellence and international competitiveness in science and technology. The next question is Excellence and International Competitiveness for what and for whom? What does it do for UP’s stakeholders? This is certainly good for UP’s alumni, faculty, students – it enhances the value of their UP degrees, their UP affiliation, it opens doors for them. But UP prides itself on being a national university, on your students being iskolar ng bayan. So, bayan is a stakeholder. What does this do for the bayan?
Let me begin with a video clip: (clip of Lupang Pangako 2003 shown)
Amartya Sen, in an article in the New York times a couple of years ago, says: “To build a country, build a schoolhouse. I am aware that when I argue that basic education for all can transform the miserable world in which we live, I sound a little like a Victorian gentlewoman delivering her favorite recipe for progress. As it happens, however, extensive empirical studies have demonstrated the critical role of basic education in economic and social development in Europe and North America as well as in Asia, Africa and Latin America.”
This dream from Amartya Sen is possible. Under the leadership of a wonderful principal, with the support of the community, and the responsiveness of the City Mayor, Lupang Pangako has changed.
(Video clip of Lupang Pangako 2008 shown.)
As the story of Lupang Pangako illustrates, success is possible. Ateneo started working with first 4, then 8 of the poorest grade schools in Quezon City several years ago. When we started, their overall scores in the NAT were in the 40% or 50% bracket and they ranked number 80 or 90 out of 96 schools in Quezon City. Lupang Pangako now ranks number 13, Payatas B number 6, Patayas C number 5. All have improved. A year or so ago, Ateneo committed to help improve all the public elementary and high schools in Quezon City.
Our experience is that it will take the effort of all sectors of society to rise to this challenge. The DepEd is essential. Local Governments are essential. The principal and the community, above all, are essential.
But universities can make a difference.
But here lies a deep problem. As the title of my presentation indicates, it will not be easy for us to bring together our pursuit of academic competitiveness and the task of improving public education. This was brought home to me in a very stark way in a recent symposium I attended.
In March of this year I was invited to present a paper at the Centennial of the International Commission on Mathematical Instruction in Rome on mathematics education in developing countries. I spoke in particular on the Philippine experience and a major part of my report was on the experience of the Third Elementary Education Project, the work we do in Payatas and that of Synergeia Foundation in ARMM.
During the discussion and open forum, however, the questions were all about how our work could contribute to establishing mathematics education as a scientific discipline and how it could lead to research and international publications. In other words, they were primarily interested in how this promoted our particular discipline of mathematics education. At that point, I realized that there was a serious disconnect between my own concerns and those of my scientific colleagues. We were on parallel tracks and as the symposium went on, I realized that the concerns of mathematics education as a scientific discipline and the concerns of improving children’s mathematics performance on a national scale, were on divergent paths.
So when I ask in my title whether the path towards international competitiveness and overcoming poverty can converge, it is because from my experience, they actually diverge. The path towards international competitiveness leads us to outstanding scientists, international recognition, gives us great prestige. But it leaves the task of overcoming poverty untouched.
On the other hand, if one focuses on the task of overcoming poverty, one finds that one must engage in many things, like working with local governments, organizing people, etc., etc. These are not disciplinal endeavors and thus do not lend themselves to a research project, with clear methodologies, whose results can be published in internationally recognized journals.
This divide is not easy to bridge. The difficulty is not due to any lack of good will or desire on our part. They are rooted in the cultures of universities and academic disciplines and in the institutional organization of the modern university. There are two ways we can use to understand the difficulty.
The first is from Howard Gardner in his latest book “Five Minds for the Future”. He describes the first two minds as the Analytical Mind and the Synthetic Mind.
The analytical mind breaks down problems into its different components, masters one or the other of these components and creates new knowledge about them. This is the mind we focus on the most in universities, the mind that does groundbreaking research and publishes respected scholarship.
The synthetic mind, on the other hand, brings together knowledge from disparate disciplines and from expertise beyond the academe to solve a particular problem or to build something new. It is the mind of an entrepreneur like Ted Turner, who built CNN, of Bill Gates, who built Microsoft, of great leaders in the world.
While we need the research and deeper knowledge coming from analytical minds to understand the different facets of our poverty problem, we need equally the capabilities of the synthetic mind to put together the various components needed to make progress on the problem.
But educating the synthetic mind is beyond any particular academic discipline. It is thus difficult to find a secure place for it in the structure of the modern university, which is discipline-based.
The second way to understand the difficulty of bringing together our role in becoming research universities, on the one hand, and engaging poverty on the other, I spoke about in a recent faculty address at the Ateneo de Manila. I referred to a book by a noted Jesuit historian, Fr. John O’Malley, about the Four Cultures in the modern Western-inspired university. The two most relevant for us are, first, the culture of research and analysis and creation of new knowledge, the culture coming from Plato and Aristotle and the culture of the modern research university. The second is focused on preparing good leaders for society, leaders for the common good, the humanistic culture coming from Isocrates and the schools, The goal of the first is Truth; the second, the Common Good. They are both needed, but live uneasily with each other. The first culture considers the second as fuzzy and non-rigorous. The second sees the first as often irrelevant to the real needs of society.
The metrics for the first culture are clear: research and publications in internationally respected journals. The metrics for the second are less easy to capture: institutions and leaders, who actually build the common good.
Howard Gardner asks how we might educate the synthetic mind. One approach he gives is that in addition to the dominant task of the modern research university of strong disciplinal focus and the education of future researchers, the university should also create “educational programs directed specifically at certain individuals of promise, leaders for tomorrow. Chief executives and general managers are expected to be able to see the big picture – to look beyond their own background and specialization; to understand the various components in their constituency . . . to think systemically about what is working, what is not working, and how goals can be more effectively achieved. . . . Perhaps as educator Vartan Gregorian has suggested, we need a specialization in becoming a generalist. Such a specialization would target promising candidates and devote resources towards the enhancement of synthesizing capabilities.”
I would imagine that an institution such as France’s Ecole Nationale d’Administration, which takes candidates in their middle or late twenties (just 100 of them a year) and puts them through a rigorous multi-disciplinary training for two years and then assigns them to key leadership positions in the country is such an institution.
I would like to end with tasks I would ask such leaders to prioritize, should the UP or other universities in our country decide to focus on the education of such leaders.
Just last week Dr. Pepe Abueva sent me a copy of his book, “Reinventing U.P. as the National University: Learning for Truth, Leadership and Social Transformation.” Dr. Abueva and I are now in a Presidential Task Force on Education, part of whose major focus is to work towards improving retention rates and academic achievement in our public elementary and high schools. We look forward to a day when we can truly say that every Filipino child has the opportunity to have a good elementary and high school education. We are far from this goal. The latest statistics say that of every 100 pupils entering Grade 1, only 56 finish grade school and only 30 finish high school. Achievement rates have improved for elementary school. But achievement rates for high school continue to be an average of below 50%. I believe that Social Transformation is not possible for any country with such dismal basic education results.
The first task I would give to these future leaders would be to set annual targets for improving retention rates, completion rates and achievement scores for our elementary and high school system.
Secondly, for technical and higher education in our country, my colleagues tell me that typically for every 100 interviewees for jobs in the Business Process Outsourcing companies, they are able to hire 6. This is just one stark example of the mismatch between higher education and the employment world. Our Task Force is working with former UP Colleagues, Dr. Ester Garcia and Dr. Olive Caoili of University of the East, Dr. Cristina Padolina of Centro Escolar University and others to improve links and relevance between higher education and job opportunities.
This is the second task I would give these future leaders. Improve the links between higher education and the leadership and employment needs of agriculture, business and industry.
I have often quoted a Japanese colleague who told me that they believe that a country can march only as fast as its slower members. Whatever pride UP and other leading universities in our country may take in our achievements, the Philippines will not march at our pace. It will march at the pace of the public elementary and high schools.
Love for our country and our people invites us to do what we can to march to the future with them.