Because higher and professional education in the Philippines has focused for decades on college degree-oriented programs, resulting in what I've called the cultural disease of “diplomitis,” the recent passing of the EBET Law might give the impression that enterprise-based education and training is a completely new phenomenon in our country. This couldn't be further from the truth. Almost fifty years ago, in 1967, a group of economists, media practitioners, and educators started an upskilling, reskilling, and retooling program that wasn't intended to be a degree-granting course but was primarily meant to solve a shortage of a certain set of knowledge and skills that was in great demand then but wasn't being produced by formal educational institutions like colleges and universities. I'm very familiar with this historical fact because, modesty aside, I was part of the team that conceived of the idea of upskilling, reskilling, and retooling members of the management staffs of leading Philippine enterprises.
The story began with Dr. Jesus (Jess) Estanislao, well known as the Founder of the Center for Research and Communication (CRC) that eventually metamorphosed into the University of Asia and the Pacific (UA&P). Jess, upon returning from a Ph.D. course in economics at Harvard University, first worked for a government agency called the Program Implementation Agency (PIA) under the Office of the President, who was then Diosdado Macapagal. PIA had an interesting history. It was set up for a pragmatic reason. Before the Macapagal Administration, economic planning in the government had been conducted by highly trained economists who worked for what was then called the National Economic Council (NEC)—precursor of today’s National Economic Development Authority (NEDA). The problem, however, was that the best-laid plans of NEC never saw the light of day because there was a disconnect between the economic plans and what the various government agencies were implementing. Being the pragmatic person that he was, President Diosdado Macapagal decided to create in his office the Program Implementation Agency (PIA) to make sure that the NEC plans were actually being implemented. Some of the best and brightest of my contemporaries then, e.g., Alejandro Melchor, Armand Fabella, and Antonio Ayala, were among those who were recruited to work for PIA. Jess decided to join them after returning from Harvard in 1964.
In 1967, Jess decided to leave the government to work for the private sector, specifically for the Bank of Asia, one of the leading private banks then. In his new job as a bank economist, he realized that there was a serious shortage of economists who specialized in what we can call industrial or business economics. The vast majority of economists trained abroad and a few trained in the fledgling School of Economics of the University of the Philippines were what we can call macroeconomists, well-versed in such areas as fiscal policy, monetary policy, trade policy, and development economics. So Jess decided to organize a team of economists, educators, and media practitioners to start an economics think tank called the Center for Research and Communication, whose main mission was to produce studies on the economics of industries (as well as of regions) that could be used by the leading enterprises of the time for planning and operations. For example, companies who were the first to generously support the establishment of CRC were Meralco, United Laboratories, Victorias Milling, Philex Mining, Ayala Land, BPI, and San Miguel Corporation. Obviously, these corporations were interested in the economics of energy, the economics of the pharmaceutical industry, the economics of the sugar industry, the economics of the mining industry, etc., etc.
Jess, who is also well known for having founded the Institute for Corporate Directors (ICD) and the Institute for Solidarity of Asia (ISA), both of which are also famous for upskilling and reskilling top executives of both public and private enterprises in the science and art of good governance, can be credited for meeting the demands of industry for the appropriate skills without having to depend on formal educational programs that were being supervised by such government agencies as the Commission on Higher Education (CHED). Together with some of us who shared the same vision, we started recruiting college graduates with the most diverse backgrounds (civil engineers, metallurgical engineers, lawyers, humanities graduates, accountants, etc.) and developed a training program in the field of industrial economics, which was a work-and-study program. We would give them the theoretical foundation of the science of industrial economics in the morning and then send them to work in the afternoon with our cooperating business enterprises. Even before the term “dual training,” learned from the dualvoc system of the Germans, was introduced into the Philippine technical training sector, we already implemented the system at the professional level. In fact, we didn't refer to the individuals in the Industrial Economics Program (IEP) as students. We referred to them as “graduate staff.” They were already a special class of employees, not academic students.
At the beginning of CRC in 1967, Jess was the only full-time professor. I was still teaching at De La Salle University on Taft Avenue, Manila, as Head of the Economics Department and Dean of the Graduate School of Business. I was very aware, and I informed Jess accordingly, that we could not possibly convert what we were doing at CRC into a formal degree-giving program leading, for example, to an M.S. in Industrial Economics. At DLSU, I was very cognizant of the very bureaucratic nature of the Department of Education then. To offer a masteral program in any field, the rule was that an educational institution must first have an equivalent undergraduate program in the same field. That was not possible for CRC. At that time, to be recognized as a university, an institution had to begin with an entire grade school and high school, not just higher education. Notwithstanding all these obstacles, Jess and the rest of us were determined to continue with our reskilling, upskilling, and retooling efforts. We were concerned with solving a manpower shortage problem. We refused to be hostage to the cultural disease of “diplomitis.” We were content to be able to issue Certificates of Participation. I think that today, what we have to convince parents and their children is that a document certifying that one has the appropriate knowledge and skills required for a given job should be more important than a college diploma. More importantly, this should also be the attitude of the typical employer. The problem is most employers still insist on the possession of a college degree as a minimum requirement, whatever the nature of the job may be. Employers should test for skills, not for credit units in a college program.
In 1967, however, Providence was on our side. It just so happened that the Secretary of Education then was a fellow Harvard alumnus, the late Dr. Onofre D. Corpuz (called O. D. by his friends). O.D., who later became the President of the University of the Philippines, was Education Secretary when Jess inquired if CRC could be given a special privilege to grant a Master of Science degree, despite our not having an equivalent Bachelor of Science program in the same field. To our great rejoicing, he was progressive and forward-looking enough that he gave CRC an exemption from the rule. He said that we could go ahead and grant a masteral degree even if we did not have a bachelor’s degree program. That was a boon to our efforts to attract more trainees because even today, it is very difficult to cure Filipinos of the sickness of “diplomitis.” In fact, as I discussed in the first article of this series, the very EBET law is still hostage to the reality that the end-all and be-all of many Filipinos is to get a college diploma and, therefore, are happy that the EBET law will enable them to get academic credits leading to a college degree through some form of equivalency of work experience and credit units in some degree program or another. To be continued.