(Part I)
To pursue future-ready Filipinos in the complex 21st century, the Management Association of the Philippines (MAP) must return to its raison d’être of promoting management excellence for a progressive Philippines, especially on its 75th Anniversary.
What better way to address, in the knowledge age, one of the root causes of the miseducation crisis in the country: the overall relatively low quality of our education institutions, including those at higher levels. They graduate many of the leaders and managers shaping the Philippine economy — for MAP members, a third of the GDP of the country.
These institutions are responsible for producing the early childhood, primary, and secondary school teachers who, with parents, largely shape the workforce and leadership of our society, economy, and governance organizations.
However, teachers are beholden to the CEOs of HEIs and their Boards, as well as the government agencies promoting and regulating them. These HEI Boards include regional or local elected political leaders, other appointed industry and alumni representatives in state or local universities and colleges.
These result in the cumulative downward spiral of quality education institutions in the country. For example, why do college graduates have to take more vocational-technical courses for them to be gainfully employed, as data from the Second Congressional Commission on Education (better known as EDCOM II) show? Is the coordination problem with Department of Education (DepEd) teachers and principals who are products of the Commission on Higher Education (CHED)? Can TESDA — the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority — co-create Senior High School course content and pedagogy to develop job-ready Filipinos for future industries?
TRILEMMA ACROSS EDUCATION BODIESThe confused state of theoretical vs. practical coordination among the trifocal education agencies of government emanates from a classical trilemma: two parties (dilemma) talking to each other minus a third party that matters, compounded as two dilemmas are repeated three times (trilemma): A vs B, B vs C, C vs A — now being partially resolved at EDCOM II in efforts to coordinate DepEd, CHED, and TESDA structures and programs.
CHED is shaping the normal schools responsible for teacher education, whose graduates — around two-thirds of whom are unlicensed to practice teaching – are recruited by DepEd for sheer lack of qualified teachers. Multiple intelligences deserve different learning and teaching styles — but to what extent does DepEd promote this, without the data on nutrition status of normal school graduates?
Healthy solutions to malnutrition of the past decades are not even taught in TESDA in its popular food courses, like baking and pastry production, or Food Processing NC II — as a respected Filipino-American biochemist and medical doctor who taught at Harvard and UCLA found out in a training program for national and regional officials in TESDA’s Learning by Doing course.
OVERALL EDUCATION CEO PERFORMANCE EXCELLENCEFor its part, MAP, on its 75th year, under the leadership of MAP President Alfredo Panlilio, is launching its first training program of the newly named MAP CEO Academy. It was germinated in earlier years at the MAP Education Committee through previous MAP Presidents Rene Almendras and Dick Du-Baladad.
It will focus on CEOs of Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) as they collaborate with government agencies, mainly the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) for its Philippine Quality Awards (PQA) promotion mandate, and various industry and training associations with an AI interest or focus.
PQA is based on the global standard for organizational excellence in any economic field. Hence, the Academy must be infused with high levels of rigorous educational standards in pursuit of overall performance of groups organized for either profit- or non-profit purposes.
PQA ROOTSThat global gold standard was unconsciously set up by former US Commerce Secretary Malcolm Baldrige (1981-87), under President Ronald Reagan, through a National Quality Award for export competitiveness. It led to antitrust reform, discussion of technology transfer issues with China and India, and US-Cabinet level talks on economic relations with the Soviet Union.
This total quality management approach was also the basis of an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) program on results-based management in the first decade of the new millennium. When President Fidel V. Ramos hosted the APEC 1996 Economic Leaders Meeting, the Summit ideas led to his Executive Order creating the PQA. It was institutionalized in R.A. 9013 (Feb. 28, 2001) under President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, aimed to “encourage organizations in both the private and public sectors to attain excellence in quality in the production and/or delivery of their goods and services.”
Hopefully, among others, the PQA discussion in the MAP Training will revive the Malaysian model requiring several years of formal training for any person to be eligible for appointment as a President of a public university, a very interesting case widely discussed at a CHED-AIM Global Academic Leadership Program during the COVID years.
AI ROADMAPThe MAP CEO Academy PQA Training Program will also follow the National AI Strategy Roadmap No. 2 (DTI, 2024), based on an earlier Department of Science and Technology strategy of preparing Filipinos for a digital future.
The good news on this front is that “world tech titans” are reportedly heading to the Philippines “to shape AI-powered future of the $1-trillion BPO Industry (Bilyonaryo Business News, Sept. 16). The Philippines’ dominant strengths in global nursing and maritime human resource markets should generate more interest in managerially excellent educational training and health sector institutions around AI.
MAP PQA TRAININGThe MAP Training for HEI CEOs will be conducted at the University of the Philippines-BGC campus on Oct. 13 and 14. Beyond talks that move toward more internal training workshops, as in corporate universities, MAP can later collaborate with other education reform groups on management excellence programs to deepen industry-academic linkages, an EDCOM II agenda among several priorities in its first two years.
Designed to give substance to the talks around town, the two-day training session follows an earlier related program of the MAP Education Committee, held at the Asia Pacific College in the early second quarter of this year. It zeroed in on “Building a Stronger Workforce through Structured Internship and Lifelong Learning Legislation.”
For the present training program, the seven criteria of the PQA will be integrated into CEO skills for overall performance excellence. This will not just focus on curriculum for industries of the future, nor mere employability of graduates, but overall leadership excellence to prepare all Filipinos to be 21st century-ready. This now falls on the shoulders of HEI CEOs.
Part II of this article will elucidate on the training workshop themes on three national reform areas — environment, social, and governance issues — where the PQA criteria will be integrated for quality education-industry linkages. The HEI CEOs will be challenged to present ideas on training in negotiation skills for tariff wars anent these.
Federico “Poch” M. Macaranas is the Chair of the MAP Education Committee. He has designed and taught courses for CEOs and high-level officials of various industries and economies in the Asia-Pacific Region.
