MUCH jitters in Bicol education scene spread like bushfire when news was bruited about telling La Salle University would buy the University of Nueva Caceres. I was told by a close-in insider, it was thought that way for PHINMA CEO Ramon del Rosario, Jr. sat at the La Salle policy body.

        Though the apprehensions were imaginary thus floured by we’ve-got-to-be-prepared thing, its very unraveling was defensively caught in the microcosm of instructional pabulum of limitation. You get this quiver when you’ve stayed too long at the computer sizing up data helplessly: the campus is all when it’s not.

        PHINMAs entry by way of UNC is unrestricted to Naga alone. Its definitive appearance triggers an invigoration of its homegrown counterparts that can elevate college education not only in Camarines Sur but in the entire region. Competition does give way to integration. There, resource is multiplied, a natural tendency of power to change. Optimistic, isn’t it?

        Just what’s this PHINMA is a good question. Where it’s going is a better one. Remember that teaching the youth is altogether a dynamic process. One with the vision to root off poverty no matter the degree in our midst particularly is a welcome treat.

        Well, PHINMA, a Philippine company of 50 years, through the Bacnotan Consolidated Industries, made its reputation in cement manufacture where in four plants it had stakes in and two others managed by it had an annual mill output of 8.2 million metric tons. This was about 50 percent of the country’s supply. From manufacturing, it moved later to services: housing, power and electricity, finance, and education.

        Committing itself to educating the marginalized: children of farmers, policemen, teachers and other government employees, tricycle and pedicab drivers, vendors, laborers, and the like, the company created the PHINMA Education Network. It planned the setup to pool l00,000 students for five colleges and universities strategically located in different parts of the country. Hence in 2004, PHINMA purchased Araullo University, Cabanatuan; in 2005, Cagayan de Oro College, Misamis Oriental. Now UNC is aligned to the system.

        Truth to tell, this condition of the have-nots being given said tolerance extends to them an equalizing chance with the haves on opportunities. Justice is served in this equity.

        So the structure’s pronounced emphasis levels its profitability on numbers, especially, rather than tuition increases which ups by 8 to l0 percent every year. The approach reckons the inability of wage and salary to rise in the same way. This has to rationalize access.

        While that is not necessarily new, a hopeful blueprint by PHINMA in its formation of a community of instructors and professors in realizing its social conscience inheres to the role by way of competencies than credentials, for pay and promotion. Here’s how it works: they should show they’re “great” teachers, ergo, they must inspire students, in the ways of old, “It is not a sin to be poor, but not to rise from poverty is shameful.” It’s the best kind, I tell you. And they’re central to the network.

        Such aspiration trims from a profile in the institution that can pay less attention to the traditional “publish or perish” engagement of academic highbrows. A bugle of sometimes a not-so-popular melody must sound to a breed of teachers who have to exact surrogacy in utmostly serious a manner, if not sacrificing. Quality learning rests on them.

        You’d see at initiation for PHINMA has to ride on current mode of practice and material a probable incomplete cessation of deliberate efforts of faculties to run research beyond classroom work which, while assuredly clinical and hypothetical in view of real job requirements, has to dictate the tempo of instruction. This is real McCoy.

        How about a PHINMA administration? It’s centralized, to cut worthless cost and to deliver the essentials to the frontlines. It’s as if you hear the president saying, “I mean business, in education.”

        PHINMA did not stop there. It has joined well-meaning entrepreneurial CEOs in the organization they call: Philippine Business for Education (PBEd). Its aim: “make the Philippine Education System effective and efficient, universal and inclusive.”

        After the fact where educational exclusion of the masses is a glaring reality, exploited in a sense in work due to need, a correction is vital. A sense of commitment from the unwary cannot but be proper.

        Where the government has, by force of circumstance, formed problematic kinks in enforcing duties in education, the PBEd helps to smoothen those kinks. It should succeed, for our children and their children’s children. Then what fear can our locals cultivate in the presence of PHINMA except fear itself, and that’s just bad.