Why not a blue collar university?

In the world of education, we have witnessed these past few days to be the “graduation or moving up week.” The Department of Education (DepEd) characterizes the word graduation as the culminating event marking completion of a major education milestone, usually Grade 12 or college. On the other hand, the DepEd says that moving up ceremonies celebrate the transition from one school level to another (e.g., elementary to middle school, junior high to senior high). The internet gives the significance of these characterizations in the following words: “Graduation signifies that the student has met all academic requirements to advance out of that institution, such as basic education” while “Moving up acts as a "rite of passage" signaling preparedness for higher academic challenges.”

I met a blank wall in trying to get the annual K-12 graduation numbers in Cebu City. I learned that these data for public schools are not consistently published in single reports. In fact, the supposedly relevant information that I gathered is less helpful. When I tried to know how many Cebu City public schools are there that carry the K-12 program, the feedback that I got was “there are approximately 60–90 public integrated K–12 schools in Cebu City.” Honestly, this statement is more wanting than informative.

Comparatively speaking, there are more revealing and instructive data in the provincial level. As of the 2024–2025 school year, over 100,000 senior high school students graduated in the broader Cebu province. Even then, I was hoping to get the estimated high school graduates who proceeded to enroll in colleges and more importantly what college courses have they taken. I got no figures. Or maybe, I did not know how to go my way around! Mea culpa.

I attempted to gather relevant data on K-12 graduates because I want to titillate the minds of our city leaders to establish a college institution which should offer courses different from such highfalutin degrees as accountancy, engineering, law and medicine. If I only had hard scientific data, I could have shown what I personally perceive. Only a small percentage of K-12 graduates proceed to enroll in college and which courses are for white collar professions. Still more telling is the fact that most of these eventual college students come from families who can afford. Those families who have less in life, could only dream of sending their children to college.

In my college years, there were such schools as Concord Technical School, Cebu Polytechnic School and Universal Radio Institute, to name those I recall. I do not know if they still exist. I remember them though because I used to pass near their campuses going to my school. Those schools provided the need for technology-based skilled workers because, in my understanding, they taught their students not the engineering concept of internal combustion engines, for example, but how to fix cars found on the road dead. Anyway, a carpenter who learns from school how to measure a distance between two points is more dependable than one who simply guesses the difference between feet and meters.

To meet this need for better educated workers, the city has to establish a kind of technical-vocational school. Such institution of learning does not compete with the private colleges and universities in our midst. In my happy imagination., I like to call this institution as blue collar university where eventual blue collar manpower like mechanics, carpenters, heavy equipment drivers, masons, painters and a host of other workers are adequately educated on shorter duration and at much lesser expense. Better still, the city has to subsidize this education because the students come from less privileged members of our society who would rather want their children become janitors.