Several decades ago, Asians flocked to the Philippines to study, and no one seemed to mind if the school year started in June. Foreign students came here not just to attain English proficiency but also to learn how to increase rice yields, run a modern airport and become world-class professionals. They came here because they believed a Philippine education would help them compete in a globalizing economy.
This coming school year, classes in some of the country’s top universities will start for the first time in August instead of June. Students will have a longer school vacation, but it means that next year, they will spend the summer in classrooms and take their annual break at the height of the typhoon season.
The decision to change the school calendar was reached after thorough discussions and consultations with stakeholders. University administrators explain that the shift in the academic calendar is meant to synchronize their school year with those of the Philippines’ neighbors and several other countries. This can facilitate faculty exchange programs and allow Philippine schools to attract more foreign students, which is expected to boost earnings.
If those are the goals, adjusting the school calendar may help, but the best come-on is still the quality of the product. In the past decades, a massive brain drain in the teaching pool combined with scarce resources resulted in deterioration in the quality of Philippine education even as the country’s neighbors invested heavily in this sector. Some Asian countries are positioning themselves as regional centers for world-class education, not only by developing their own top-rated learning institutions but also by allowing prestigious western universities to set up satellites.
The Philippines is not lacking in teaching talent. Immigration officials count 47,478 foreign students currently enrolled in the country’s schools, many of them in higher education institutions. The number does not include the thousands of South Koreans who come to the Philippines every year to take courses in English proficiency for two or three weeks.
What Philippine education institutions need is continuous upgrading to make them globally competitive. This is good for both Philippine learning institutions, which stand to earn more with bigger enrollment, and for Filipino students, who need not go abroad to obtain world-class education.