This is an alumnus speaking, 1965.
On Facebook, above, Buhay Students has an ad congratulating UP Beloved because the “University of the Philippines moves 17 notches in 2020 Emerging Economic University Rankings,” from #87 in 2019 to #70 in 2020.
Ha ha.
Not so fast! The ranker is the London-based publication, Times Higher Education, THE. If you read the 19 February 2020 Manila Bulletin article on the topic[1], by Noreen Jazul, down to the last 2 paragraphs, you will unhappily note that THE lists 4 Asian universities in the Top 4, and they are all in Mainland China! The Chinese are better at teaching in the university than the Filipinos – and in English at that?! Shame on us Filipinos!
Compared to #1 Tsinghua University, #2 Peking University, #3 Zhejiang University, and #4 University of Science and Technology of China, my alma mater UP Beloved has been teaching in English more than 100 years; I am sure we are much, much better handlers of English than the Chinese – when we put our hearts to it. But we don’t! And so English essentially becomes the enemy of the Filipino people.
We are proud that UP Beloved ranks 66 universities awayfrom the Top 4?! Shame on us!
The rankings were based on 5 criteria: “Teaching (the learning environment); Research (volume, income and reputation); Citations (research influence); International outlook (staff, students and research); and Industry income (knowledge transfer).”
Which tells me UP Beloved is average in teaching, medium in research, hohum in paper citations, also-ran in “international outlook,” and mediocre in knowledge transfer.
I cannot accept such ranking! But I can explain it.
You see, UP Beloved is supposed to teach in English, but what happens in the classroom is teaching in Tagalog mixed with English, Taglish – the teachers are happy, the students are happy because they are showing that they are nationalistic. But the:
Learning suffers.
Research suffers.
Writing of technical papers suffers.
Publishing suffers.
Knowledge transfer suffers.
Research suffers.
Writing of technical papers suffers.
Publishing suffers.
Knowledge transfer suffers.
Nationalism is proper – but not when we equate it with speaking the national language so-called Filipino, which is essentially Tagalog. I am an Ilocano; my wife is a Tagala; I have nothing against Tagalog, but don’t use it to teach non-Filipino subjects, for God’s sake!
Years ago, I was looking for my daughter Graciela and I found her attending a class in Humanities. And the language being used was? Taglish!
Your Learning Environment is Taglish – what do you expect students to learn? When you teach a language in another language, your own trains of thoughts and those of your students become chaotic. You are intelligent but teaching confusion!
Your Research depends on Nationalism, not people's needs in terms of Development. People can neither eat Nationalism nor escape poverty by it.
Your Citations depends on publications based on Research. Nationalism cannot help write technical papers from research. Neither can Nationalism desktop-publish technical journals.
Your International Outlook suffers. Your Knowledge Transfer suffers. And yet you rejoice that UP Beloved is #70 in the University rankings!
Wake up, UP Beloved!@517
[1] https://news.mb.com.ph/2020/02/19/up-moves-17-notches-in-2020-emerging-economic-university-rankings/?fbclid=IwAR2qC4olRJZsEAs5hXlpIVE-O3cxYhk2yFpswJxjbdq3ZDGbQ3eO1GSDX8M
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