A level playing field

Let me be the among the first to congratulate my buddy and fellow STAR columnist Alfred “Krip” Yuson and compatriot Miguel “Chuck” Syjuco for making it to the shortlist of this year’s Man Asian Literary Prize with their newly minted novels. These two will join three other finalists — two Indians and one Chinese — at the awarding ceremonies on Nov. 13 in Hong Kong. Only then will the winner of the $10,000 prize be announced.

I’ve peeked at excerpts from the five shortlisted works (http://www.manasianliteraryprize.org/2008/2008shortlist.php), and as to be expected, our two kababayans have turned in pieces very different from one another, strong and compelling in their own ways. Win or lose, they’ve already helped put contemporary Filipino writing on the global literary map, and international publication should follow soon for these trailblazing works.

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I’ve been vacationing here in the US for the past couple of weeks with Beng, visiting family in what’s becoming an annual pilgrimage, now that my daughter Demi is married and living in San Diego, my sister Elaine is in Virginia with my mother, and Beng’s sister Mimi is in New York. It’s a situation I never would have imagined 30 years ago, when most of us were huddled under a galvanized iron roof in Old Balara, and a bus ride to Quiapo seemed long and far enough. But time does strange and sometimes wonderful, sometimes perplexing things, and now I live halfway around the world from some of the people I love most dearly, my only consolation being that I am hardly alone in this predicament, which I share with millions of Filipinos, most of whom can’t even get to see their families for years.

So I spend and enjoy every day of my stay here like every hour was spun in a thread of gold, even when I’m doing nothing but watching my 80-year-old mother make me coffee, which she likes to do. I’ve toured the Smithsonian complex a dozen times but never tire of the experience, and the other day, just for the heck of it, Beng and I had lunch at the cafeteria of the Air and Space Museum where, almost 20 years ago, we had helped ourselves to a platter of French fries someone had left behind at the next table, being as destitute as we were hungry. This time we could afford a leg of chicken, mashed potatoes, and, yes, a large order of fries.

It’s a very interesting time to be in America. Of course, any October is a good time to be in America, with autumn awakening the foliage while lending a bracing chill to the air. We go abroad for a touch of foreignness, and foreignness is washing over me in waves, from the backyard barbecue tended by my blond-haired brother-in-law Eddie (who’s managed to remain cheerful despite being laid off from his software programmer’s job the day before we arrived) to the ultramodern, Frank Gehry-designed cafeteria at the Conde Nast building in Manhattan where we had lunch with two fellow Pinoys, artist Kim Bello and photographer Dominique James last week.

But nothing tells me more that I’m in America than the simmering pot that’s the presidential election, at once exciting for the clash of cultures and generations represented by Barack Obama and John McCain, and also at once boring by Filipino standards. No one’s been shot yet, and the trees and walls and lampposts of America remain desolately unscathed by campaign posters. (This is, of course, the country where elective officials lack the imagination to plaster the landscape with signs reminding people that “This footbridge is a project of Congressman XYZ.”)

Nobody’s painted New York or Washington, DC pink. The sitting president, as unpopular as he is, hasn’t made noises about changing the Constitution so he can have a third term (although he may get something like it yet, if McCain wins by some miracle). They could’ve decided to grant autonomy to, say, Puerto Rico or Guam to at least open the possibility of changing the Constitution by the backdoor, but no, tsk, tsk, no one had the gumption. The voters’ lists are swelling from the unprecedented number of new registrants, but they had to go about it the hard way, because they’ve signed up only the living. Some people think Sarah Palin has brought some excitement to the race, but they haven’t seen — much less heard — the likes of Miriam Defensor-Santiago and Jamby Madrigal.

Beng and I wanted to rush back to Virginia from New York to catch Obama at a rally in Leesburg, but we got stuck on a bus, and all we got for souvenirs was a couple of buttons and a car sticker. I’d love to stay on till the fourth of November to see how this all plays out — maybe some blood will be shed, after all, or some “hanging chads” (the American equivalent of stolen ballot boxes) uncovered. But, as I told Eddie, the last two times I witnessed presidential elections in America, two guys named Reagan and Bush (the elder) won. So I’m flying home this weekend on schedule; it could be the best thing I can do for my daughter, my mother, and my sister, whom I’ll miss dearly until next year.

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It’s been a few years since I last had to defend my university in public as its vice president for public affairs, but a recent issue in the media warmed up the old juices, enough for me to ask my successor in that post, my colleague Jing Hidalgo, what the heck was going on.

The subject was the 2008 university rankings released by the Times Higher Education Supplement (THES) and Quacquarelli Symonds (QS)—known as the THES-QS survey — under which UP rose in the rankings from No. 398 in 2007 to 276 this year, topped by Ateneo de Manila University which rose even more spectacularly to No. 254. De La Salle University and the University of Santo Tomas also made the top 500.

Never mind the UP-Ateneo rivalry; those of us who’ve worked with both institutions know what the strengths and weaknesses of each university are. What’s interesting is how those figures were arrived at.

Prof. Hidalgo tells me that UP never agreed to participate in this survey. “In fact, this year, president Emerlinda R. Roman did not even receive an invitation to be a part of it. Nor did she receive any questionnaire to answer. What she did receive was an e-mail message from QS Asia regional director (Asia Pacific), Mandy Mok, informing her that UP had ‘gone up in the rankings’ for 2008. The e-mail also contained an invitation to buy ‘an attractive package’ from THES-QS. The ‘package price,’ which includes a banner on topuniversities.com, a full page full color ad in Top Universities Guide 2009, and a booth at Top Universities Fair 2009, amounts to $48,930.”

It wasn’t just the money — which, at P2 million, UP can hardly spare — but also THES-QS’s earlier refusal to explain where it got the data for its earlier rankings that led UP to opt out of the process. When UP told THES-QS last year that it wasn’t taking part, it was told that the survey would be “forced to use last year’s data or some form of average.” Two years ago, UP came in at No. 299, while Ateneo was ranked No. 500.

I recall how, even when I served in the UP administration, we wondered how reliable such rankings were in terms of establishing academic excellence, because they were often based on such quantities as the size of budgets, number of PhDs, number of foreign faculty, and number of foreign students — indices more favorable to heavily endowed Western universities.

Just to make things clear, we need more of those plus points, too, and if we’re lacking in them, then that’s clearly a problem that’s keeping us from achieving truly world-class status. But what about resourcefulness? How do you recognize a physics department whose people can put a laser machine together all by themselves? What about service to the nation? What points can you give something like the Pahinungod program, which sends fresh graduates to teach poor children in the hinterlands?

We don’t want to sound like sore losers, but at least you expect the game to be held on a level playing field.

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E-mail me at penmanila@yahoo.com, and visit my blog at www.penmanila.net.