Filling a gap in RP educational system
The Philippines is perhaps one if the most education-hungry and education-conscious nations. The concept of mass access of higher education introduced by the Americans at the beginning of this century has been taken to its stretching point so that as early as 20 years ago the Philippines had become the country with the highest number of college students per million population.
Besides the influence of the democratic approach to higher education of the American colonizers, many other factors contribute to this phenomena.
There is the phenomenal success of private institution of higher learning (both religious and non-sectarian), responsible for the production of over per cent of college graduates over the last half century.
There is also the social-cultural context which encourages unlimited of women to higher education so that the Philippines is the only country in the world where there are more women than men in colleges and universities.
Perhaps most significantly, there is evidence throughout the history of the Filipino of a preponderant desire dating back to prehistoric time to be educated and to be recognized for that education through a formal credentialing system.
Despite the country's high literacy rate and the ever-growing number entering its 600 colleges and universities, however, the thirst for education is far from being quenched.
The latest statistics tell us that of every 100 students entering elementary schools, only 62 finish the course. Of these, only 15 finish high school. The national college entrance examinations qualify about 70 per cent of those high school graduate who wish to enter college but in reality, of the 15 high school graduates, only seven actually get to colleges and only four finish.
Again there are a number of reasons for this. The thirst for education remains, but despite the dream of every Filipino parent to see his or her child through college, there are causes which prevent vast numbers from entering college let alone finishing.
For one thing, the absorptive capacity of the formal educational system is already stretched to breaking point. The bottomless pit of an elementary educational system which has to provide at least two million additional places annually has about siphoned off all available public money earmarked for education.
The private sector on other hand has been caught in the being unable to raise tuition as fast as its cost and still shamefully-low salaries are rising.
The is a academic and curricular issue of the absorptive capacity of not just the school system, but also the economy itself. The phenomena of the education unemployed or college graduates who cannot find jobs, is also painfully common in the Philippines .
Because higher education is largely private sector-oriented, the system has veered towards an overproduction of graduates from less expensive courses (liberal, art, commerce, and per cent of all graduate), and away from the less profitable but more necessary degree and non-degree technical courses.
Most fundamentally the financial strain of sending one or several children off to college for four year is often just too much to bear for a typical family.
Quite apart from the expenses incurred for tuition, books, transportation, and living cost, having another potential wage earner out off gainful employment for another four years just cannot be endure.
Although evening classes try to alleviate this situation, there are to any jobs with irregular working hours or not conveniently proximate to a campus that are ignored by the evening classes scheme.
Within the complex and relatively advanced configuration of the formal Philippines education network, there for, there remains a definite gap to be filled. That gap cam only be filled by an institution which answer the need for a respectable and universally recognized formal education credentialing institution which gives qualified potential students the opportunity to pursue higher education even if they find it impossible, for whatever financial or job-related reasons, to have regular access to an existing college campus.
The Asian University of Independent Studies was established precisely to provide an alternative means to achieving higher education other than regular attendance at existing private of public universities. The distinctive characteristic of this alternative is the distance-study feature which permits students within their own time and space constraints. The university, therefore, does not compete with other universities but rather complements their efforts by serving those not served by the existing system.
A few universities such as the University of Life in Metro Manila and the University of Mindanao in Davao, do have pilot programs that attempts to provide distance-study courses by their radio or correspondence these are, however, local rather than national is scope and remain on the periphery rather than at the heart of the educational effort of these predominantly campus oriented instructions.
There are also a handful of eight to ten smaller establishments in the Manila area that offer correspondence courses in a variety of predominantly skill-oriented courses. The smallness of their scale, together with the absence of quality control features, does not , however, meet the need for an established higher education distance-study program.
The AUIS, in the tradition of independent study institutions in some countries overseas, can fill a real gap in the higher education system and serve a unique function that at present no Philippine institution is serving.
