8th
From today’s PDI editorial: “The UP has played a very important role in the social, economic and political development of the nation in the last 100 years. It produced seven out of 14 presidents, 12 chief justices of the Supreme Court, 30 out of 31 national scientists and 36 out of 57 national artists. Of the close to 250,000 UP alumni, 15,000 are doctors, 8,000 are lawyers and 23,000 are teachers…”
but
“…the UP has fallen on hard times principally because of budgetary constraints. …[its] talented professors have moved to other universities that pay bigger salaries. State-of the-art teaching aids and laboratory equipment are lacking because there are no funds for their acquisition. An indication of the decline of standards at UP is the fact that it barely made it to the list of the THES-QS World University Rankings of the Top 400 Universities, placing 398th.”
***
Today we celebrate with a motorcade and fireworks, and rightly so. But I wish we could show how much we value UP’s “excellence, service, leadership” in more substantial terms. For me, that means making good on those pledges once made in dear old Rizal Hall in Padre Faura…