Lofty designs for higher education

MANILA, Philippines—Emmanuel Y. Angeles is quick to stress that he is not a businessman.

Instead, he says he is a lawyer, having practiced law for 50 years. He is also an educator, having built a school in Angeles City, Pampanga and transforming it into the first university in Central Luzon.

Make no mistake, however, Angeles is every bit as sharp as a businessman when it comes to his endeavors, whether as head of his university, or the Clark Development Corp., or in his present portfolio as head of the Commission on Higher Education (CHEd).

Yet, by his own admission, his current pursuits are far detached from the kind of life he wanted for himself as a young man.

First love

“My first love was flying,” Angeles says in an interview. “I really wanted to become a pilot. But my mother begged me to take up law instead.”

According to him, he was the “most obedient” among seven siblings, and gave in to his mother’s wishes. He took up law, passed the bar in 1961 and practiced as a litigation lawyer in Manila, taking up pro bono cases in the years long before the establishment of the Public Attorneys Office for indigent clients.

But again his mother, Barbara, came into the picture.

“My mother talked to me again, saying that she wanted me to become an educator,” explaining at the same time how influential his mother was in his life.

Higher office

According to Angeles, his mother asked him to revive a shuttered school she used to run in the 1930s, despite having only P5,000 as starting capital.

“It was a very ambitious plan,” he concedes. “But I said I would build a school for her in ten years.”

As it happened, the school that is now the Angeles University Foundation became a full-fledged university in nine years, 11 months and 16 days.

“I am proud to say that it now has a medical school, and both are centers of excellence,” Angeles says. “Both are now very close to world-class standards.”

But he was soon called to higher office by no less than President Macapagal-Arroyo.

Angeles was tapped by the President to run both the Clark Development Corp. and the Clark International Airport Corp., which run the Diosdado Macapagal International Airport.

“I came from the academe, but I was appointed by the President to run Clark,” he says, adding that his special task was to start international airline operations at the former US air base.

Four years later—having achieved his mandate—he excused himself to go back to the field of education, but not after leaving the special economic zone on solid economic footing.

Nowadays, however, he is using his management skills to wrestle with a larger program with longer term implications for the country.

As chair of the Commission on Higher Education—a post that carries a fixed six-year term—Angeles spearheads the effort to restore the country’s antiquated educational system to its former glory.

“Given the deterioration of the quality of our education in this country, it will take another two or three decades to undo what has been neglected,” he says, giving a grim assessment of the national situation.

What happened?

“We used to be the center and hub of quality education in the Asia-Pacific region,” Angeles laments. “What happened? We were left behind. The countries that improved were Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, and soon Vietnam.”

“We are now identified with Laos, Cambodia, Myanmar, and soon East Timor,” he says. “Do we want that?”

To reverse this trend, Angeles immediately implemented a set of difficult—sometimes unpopular—initiatives at the CHEd.

The first phase called for massive faculty development, investing in training and retraining, as well as implementing tighter quality controls over who can and cannot teach in colleges and universities.

“Second, we have to adopt a massive scholarship program so that young, talented Filipino students can have access to quality education nationwide,” he says. “The minimum goal is to have scholars as 10 percent of 2.6 million Filipino students enrolled in 1,781 colleges and universities.”

Angeles’ third phase is to strengthen research and development—an aspect of education that the Philippines is notoriously poor in, compared to countries like Singapore and Malaysia.

Taking off

“When I came in, there were less than ten zonal research centers,” the CHEd chief says. “Now we are going to have 17—one in each region, plus a minimum of five sub-centers in each region for a total of 102.”

“We will be able to take off if we can improve R&D in our country,” he says. “One cannot take off without R&D.”

Finally, CHEd is now negotiating with partners in China, Korea, Japan and Australia for soft loans of as much as $200 million, which local colleges and universities can tap to improve their education systems.

“These are soft loans, payable in 20 years, with 2 percent interest or less, with five years grace period,” he says, adding that, if successful, a second phase worth $300 million may be introduced.

“With that funding, we can have first class public and private colleges and universities,” Angeles says.

Ambitious? Definitely. Impossible? Hopefully not. –Daxim Lucas, Philippine Daily Inquirer