The Burden of Being a National University

One of the most inspiring papers I have read. This is a challenge not just to the the academe as it is now, but to the alumni who have once been there. Mabuhay ang Iskolar ng Bayan!

The Burden of Being a National University
(Paper read at the UP System Conference, May 20-22 2009, Subic)
Randolf S. David
Professor, Dept. of Sociology
College of Social Sciences and Philosophy

Not only because we are a university heavily subsidized by taxpayers’ money, but also because the public, in general, believes rightly or wrongly that since we have produced in the last one hundred years most of the nation’s leaders and achievers in various fields — we are asked to take responsibility for the kind of society we have become.

No one perhaps has put this to us more sharply than one of our centennial guest lecturers last year, SGV founder Washington SyCip, who told us: “If UP has accurately claimed that during the past 62 years after we left the US umbrella, UP graduates have occupied the presidential chair for 46 years, then may I ask you, ‘Why are we in such a mess?’”¹

Mr. SyCip might as well have asked the same question of the Catholic Church, to which I assume the majority of the nation’s presidents belong. But that would not be fair, just as it is not fair to make UP answerable for the mess created by a few of its alumni who had the fortune to be elected the nation’s president. For, no single institution can be held responsible for what individuals do or fail to do after they have passed its portals.

Yet, Mr. SyCip can hardly be faulted for articulating a thought that does make a lot of sense at first blush. If indeed we take pride in being the school that produces the nation’s presidents, then why is the country in such a mess? We cannot claim too much credit for the achievements of our graduates, and not also assume the accompanying responsibility for the problems they create.

But, having said this, it is important for us to bear in mind that our people only have a vague idea of what we do as a university, how we function as an academic community, and, most of all, how we understand our work. The public consciousness harbors certain expectations, usually inflated, about the kind of graduates we should be producing – expectations that are not always in accord with our concept of what an educated person should be, or expectations that, though we may agree with them, we are not always in a position to meet. Our graduates, for example, are expected to top all the national examinations, and, at the same time, to be actively involved in the affairs of the nation — to be not only the best in their respective fields, but also to be socially aware and engaged. This immediately poses certain practical questions for us: For example, should we preoccupy ourselves with the training of potential bar topnotchers, or should we dismiss this goal and focus instead on “the teaching of the law in the grand manner”?