2010 National Conference on Information Education Part Two

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 takes up three columns. Last Sunday’s issue (November 7) had Part 1. This issue (November 14) has part 2 and Sunday November 21 will have the conclusion.

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Mass higher education . . . What is CHED doing to cope with this
• Provision for more scholarship for students annually;
• Development of new PSGs regulating unprecedented proliferation of sub-standard public and private HEls; and
• The continuing conversion of national high schools CHED into state colleges and universities
Internationalization points to a growth of border crossing activities amidst a persistence of borders and nations while globalization often implies that borders and nations as such get blurred in the process. Internationalization is often discussed in relation to physical mobility, academic cooperation and knowledge transfer and international education. Globalization is often associated with competition, transnational education, market steering and commercial knowledge-transfer (Techler, 2004).

2. Mobility of Students, Graduates and Scholars
a. Physical mobility of students, graduates and scholars and possibly administrators is something new in the sphere of higher education. To facilitate this, CHED is working with other Asean countries’ higher education institutions
• Credit transfer system
• Recognition of degrees
• Accreditation/National Qualification Framework
• Bologna Process
b. as a consequence of increased opportunities, declining national controls, liberalization of trade and commerce, global economic and societal interconnectedness.
c. opportunities and problems linked to student mobility have certainly changed substantially under conditions of expansion of higher education, the changing economic and social order as well as the doorstep to knowledge learning
d. mobility in higher education tends to lead to
• The role physical mobility to quality teaching and learning
• Impact of mobility on the knowledge, values and life course of the mobile person
• Cost and benefit of mobility for the mobile person, HEI and the nation

THE ACADEMIC PROFESSION, The Changing Environment

The academic profession is under stress as never before. The need to respond to the demands of massification has caused the many qualifications for academics in many countries to decline. It is a fact that up to half of the world’s university teachers have only earned a bachelor degree. The number of part-time academics has also increased. There is moonlighting from private to public and vice versa. There is brain migration because of the variation in salaries among teacher is quite significant. The academic labor market has increasingly globalized with many thousands of academics crossing borders for appointment at all levels.

The pattern of “brain drain” from the developing world has changed to some extent. The pendulum of authority in higher education has swing from the academics to managers and bureaucrats for greener pasture with significant impact on the university.

The research environment

The three (3) missions of modern university—teaching/lnstruction Research and Community Outreach/Extension Services or Public Service live in constant tension with each other at different levels.
The universities plans and programs set for the year must make hard choice> in setting priorities and allocating resources.

Research universities are at the pinnacle of the academic system and directly involved in the global knowledge network. They require major expenditures to build and are expensive to sustain . . . the facilities (libraries, laboratories and information technology infrastructure) . . . must be maintained to the highest standard.

Research production key areas such as information technology and the life sciences has become extremely important to national development. Research in biotechnology and information science are encouraged. Most of the colleges and universities in the Philippines are only teaching institutions. Intellectual property is a growing challenge in higher education. Who owns knowledge? Who benefits from research? Those who seek to maximize revenues want to protect IPResearch Results that promise patents, licenses and income.

This often brings potential conflict between those who produce research and knowledge and sponsors who may wish to control the knowledge and benefits that come from it.

(To be concluded on Sunday November 21) –FELIZARDO Y. FRANCISCO, Manila Times

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