ENDEAVOR

At this year’s graduation at the University of the Philippines Diliman, the number of honor graduates was, indeed, very high: 2,243 or nearly 69 percent out of 3,359 graduates; 305 of them summa cum laude, 1,196 magna cum laude; and 742 cum laude. In 2022, there were 1,433 honor graduates, or 38 percent out of the 3,796 graduates: 147 summa, 652 magna and 634 cum laude – indeed an augury of year-later developments.

It is not difficult to understand how this happened. The graduates of the past two years completed their college education while schools were shuttered due to the rampant pandemic. Virtual and hybrid learning took the place of classroom lectures and laboratory exercises. Many academic regulations were eased and passing grades became the norm – out of an abundance of liberality and compassion toward students whose families struggled to cope with myriad challenges of livelihood and survival.

As I pondered on this issue, I could not help but recall my own experience as a teacher.

I was a graduate school professor for almost three decades. I had worked in a commercial bank and a transportation company for 10 years before I joined the faculty of the Asian Institute of Management (AIM) where I obtained my MBA degree. AIM allowed me to go on sabbatical thrice; this enabled me to serve in government with three Presidents.

Teaching has certainly been my most fulfilling work experience, with government service almost equally satisfying.

When I returned to teaching after my second stint in government, I was asked to disclose my grading policy. The default mode was a no-brainer: at least 60 percent to class participation (CP), 30 percent for mid-term and final examinations and 10 percent for quizzes and other requirements. From as far back as my student days (I graduated from AIM in 1978), class participation (or recitation) had been the most important performance metric.  

What restrained me from announcing how I would give grades in the course on Human Behavior in Organizations (HBO) was the realization that my students’ academic load was heavily skewed toward quantitative subjects such as finance, control, and managerial statistics.

I was also chastened by a previous encounter with a student who told me: “Sir, I honestly believe my performance was worth more than the pass grade you gave me” – a call-out to the use of the “normal curve” approach where up to 80 percent of all students would merit a passing grade with only an elite few getting higher marks.  

I eventually announced my grading policy as follows: “Your grade will be based on your best performance in the following aspects of learning: class participation, optional reflection papers, and mid-term and final papers. Where you demonstrated the peak of your capabilities would be your final grade for the course.”

The students rose to the occasion. Most of them submitted one-page reflection papers on the assigned cases and readings. And yes, virtually all of them actively engaged in spirited discussions with their classmates. They contributed thoughtful insights from the crucible of their first-hand experience in life and at work. The proverbial genie had been unleashed from the lamp.

At the end of the course most of them had earned at least a high pass mark. In AIM’s grading custom, high pass was the bar to be cleared for graduating with distinction (equivalent of cum laude).

There were usually two or three distinction graduates from each MBA cohort. From 1970 to the early 2000s, there were less than five high distinction (equivalent of magna cum laude) graduates from the MBA, the Master in Management (MM) and the Master in Development (MDM) programs.

The premium placed on class participation was an offshoot of AIM’s emphasis on practitioner-oriented learning. Professors were known for their outstanding managerial or executive track record in business and industry. This was highly valued by AIM’s clientele, especially the big corporations that fielded their executives in short-term management development programs.

But as Harvard and other Ivy League institutions of higher education forayed into the lucrative Asian market, competing with top-tier European institutions, there was a virtual explosion of new management knowledge.

My former professor and faculty colleague, Eduardo Morato, Jr., who served briefly as dean at the turn of the 21st century introduced path finding innovations that carved niches of distinctive competence for AIM: first, the Master in Development Management (MDM) program; and second, the Master in Entrepreneurship (ME) program.

In the ME program, students were required to have a “live” of real-world start-up enterprise that would serve as the laboratory for their self-paced learning guided by gurus – a learning mode adapted from the creative guilds in Europe that flourished during the Renaissance era. Within such a progressive learning scenario, there was no appetite for earning high grades. How well the start-up enterprise fared in the real world was the acid test of management savvy.

I am reminded of the start-up enterprise of one of my ME students, Angel Cruz, who later served as mayor in Hagonoy, Bulacan. He developed a rice seedling farm which produced record harvests using high-yielding rice varieties developed by the Philippine Rice Institute in Nueva Ecija. He engaged his farmer-employees in a strategic planning exercise in which they did a SWOT analysis using Filipino terms: Hina at lakas, for strengths and weaknesses; pagkakataon at panganib for opportunities and threats.

It is time for a paradigm shift in Philippine higher education. The learning frame must be re-created: from one that is classroom and theory-based to one that is steeped in the crucible of experiential learning. The real worth of today’s graduates will be reckoned not in terms of Latin honors but of how they have contributed to creating a gentler, kinder world.