2010 national conference on information education

Part one

BELOW is the keynote speech I delivered during the National Conference on Information Technology Education with the theme “Building an IT Enabled Nation” on October 21, 2010 at La Carmela de Boracay Convention Center, Station 2, Boracay, Malay, Aklan. The speech is 1,852 words long and will take up three columns. So today’s issue (November 7) will have Part 1, next Sunday November 14 will have part 2 and Sunday November 21 will have the conclusion.

___

CHALLENGE: Talk about the importance of research and innovation in the academia

I commend the people behind this National Conference on IT Education Conference for this timely and a necessity.

I feel happy to be with you this morning fellow educators and students exploring some concerns and issues in higher education in the light of the changes and challenges taking place in our midst. Heraclitus once said, “Nothing endures, but change.” Change is a reality in life. In dealing with it, we either respond reactively which oftentimes is late or proactively by planning ahead and trying to initiate a strategy or action a step ahead or just ignore it and hope it will go away. Normally, change is triggered by natural causes (climate, environmental adaptations etc.), or social causes (competition, supply and demand, regulation, technology etc.), internal forces (anticipated growth, loss of experienced employees, etc.) and external forces (economy, taxation, etc). Also, the state of higher education is affected by technological, geographical and sectoral changes.

1. Movement to mass higher education

The academic revolution taking place in higher education in the past half century is unprecedented in scope and diversity. These academic changes are more extensive in general due to globalization and massification of higher education. In one of the papers presented during the 2009 Unesco World Conference in Paris, “globalization is defined as the reality shaped by an increasingly integrated world economy, new ICT, the emergence of an international knowledge network, role of the English languages and other forces beyond the control of academic institutions.”

Internationalization on the other hand is defined as the variety of policies and programs that colleges, universities and government implement to respond to globalization. As early as 1995, CHED had continuously encouraged colleges and universities to internationalize their programs through partnership or twinning arrangements and projects like Faculty and student exchanges; Philippine universities set up branches or campuses overseas or vice versa where foreign universities will open and establish branches in the Philippines or tie up with an existing HEls as foreign provider.

Massification or movement of a particular age group to achieve mass higher education (post secondary and college) was experienced first by some developed countries and eventually even developing countries have experienced dramatical increase in the participation rates of age group 17 to 21 years old. The observation however is that the growth in participation of young Filipinos is very small compared with China and India who at present are the world’s largest academic systems.

Movement to mass higher education may require the following:

1. Institutions and programs must have provisions for greater diversity of students.
2. There is a need for a large increase in number and size of HEls.
3. Several modes of delivery must be ready.
4. Franchising Management must protect Individual Property Rights (IPR).
5. The continuing increase of satellite campuses

–FELIZARDO Y. FRANCISCO, Manila Times

dirfyf@yahoo.com