The shift

For 2014, the University of the Philippines (UP) and other top universities will be shifting its academic calendar to the later part of the year. For UP, classes will officially start on August. This implies that there will be four months of summer vacation for the current and incoming students of the university for this year.

The academic calendar shift is said to be in compliance with the ASEAN integration where a synchronization of academic calendars in schools is encouraged. The said synchronization will open borders to neighboring countries whose students plan to study in the Philippines and vice versa. It will also allow professors to further their expertise by attending seminars without having to cancel classes. At the same time, the shift is said to lead our educational system to globalization. This is preparing our universities to be at par of the world's best.

Apart from the internalization of our universities, this shift also allows universities to save on school days. Our current calendar has a semester break of about three weeks during the month of October and classes are interrupted again for a Christmas break of two weeks on December. In this new calendar, the semester break and Christmas break is integrated into one month during December and the new semester starts on January. Aside from maximizing the number of school days, students also save on fare that they do not have to go home to their respective provinces twice in a school year.

While it sounds all flowery, are we really that prepared?

I, for one, see the good intention this shift brings. As an active student leader, I have also dreamed of traveling abroad to join summits and leadership congresses but I did not want to sacrifice my academic standing. Some say it is worth the risk for opportunity only knocks on your doors once but I'd rather turn it down and play safe.

However, this isn't a pressing issue to attend to at the moment. We have a large shoe to fill for now instead of focusing on what could be done in a later time. For instance, the campus at UP Tacloban and Palo need special attention in its recuperating from the damage done by typhoon Yolanda. They need financial assistance as well as encouragement for students who have been affected. Recently, cross-enrollees from Tacloban who are in Cebu were given aid by a private company - I could only wish it was from our government.

Also, there's the long-standing battle of trying to remove and/or reform the Socialized Tuition Financial Assistance Program (STFAP) where students, who are supposed to be "scholars" of the nation, are asked to pay for their tuition fees according to economic standing. Year after year, we are burdened to prove to the officials that we do not have much so they would not let us pay more than we could. On top of those concerns are university campuses that need to have facilities that would maximize the learning of the students.

The shift is not what we need at the moment. There are still other concerns that need to be addressed, immediately if possible. But now that it is already final, there's no other way to delay the shift. I do not even remember students being consulted on the shift before it took place, it just happened before we knew it.

It is no doubt that UP and other universities are doing their best to live up to its mission of delivering quality education to the Filipino youth. In fact, I appreciate their move to shift the academic calendar. Its intentions are pure and clear which is for the advancement of our educational system. But speaking as a person who is about to exit the national university, I could only hope for the government to pay attention to what this university lack if indeed they intend to raise the standards higher.