A modest proposal to globalize our education

In 1999 at the University of Bologna, 29 European countries agreed to reconcile their educational systems. The document they signed is known as the Bologna Accord (sometimes, Bologna Declaration or Bologna Process or simply Bologna), even if major amendments were agreed upon later in other cities. Since then, other European countries have signed the accord, bringing the total to 46, covering practically the whole of Europe.

One objective of Bologna is to help students and graduates move from one country system to another. In order for this to happen, each country has to have the same levels of education – same number of years, same number of units for a degree, same competencies, equivalent examinations, and so on. In particular, Bologna requires that all bachelor’s degrees have three years of major subjects or concentration.

The United States is not unhappy with this requirement, because in many American schools (led by Harvard, the world’s best university) the usual four-year bachelor’s degree has three years of concentration after one year of post-secondary General Education (GE). Because Americans firmly believe in GE, they do not mind spending an extra year in college. (By the way, remember that Europeans use the words “General Education” to refer to what we and the Americans call “Basic Education.” This sometimes leads to unnecessary confusion.)

We Filipinos, however, are unhappy about Bologna. Because Filipino professionals going to Europe contribute a lot to our economy and will not get hired if we do not comply, we have a problem. Our usual four-year undergraduate course has less than three years of concentration, because we spend more than one year on GE (51 or more units).

Every time we discuss length of schooling, the focus quickly turns to engineering. Engineering has the most number of international agreements, probably because all countries need engineers urgently and have to import engineers from other countries to fill their needs. Countries have to be sure that the engineers they import are at least as good as, if not better than their own engineers.

While Bologna applies to all degrees, there are specific international agreements about engineering. They require different lengths of concentration work. For example, the Washington Accord requires “completion of an accredited program of study typified by four years or more of post-secondary study” (the years refer to time spent only on major subjects). The Sydney Accord requires only three years (or more). The Dublin Accord requires only two years (or more). Bologna has effectively superseded the Dublin Accord, which means that engineering degrees need to cover at least three years of major subjects and, if we want to join the Washington Accord, four or more years.

Engineering even has an APEC Registry, which is more interested, however, in years of experience (at least seven) after graduation, particularly years (at least two) of “experience in responsible charge of significant engineering work.” We have a few Filipino engineers who have qualified for the APEC Registry.

My understanding is that Philippine engineering schools are interested mainly in the Washington Accord and, since we want to follow the American system of having GE in college, we have to cut our GE to one year if we want to keep our engineering courses to the current five years. Similar concerns have been raised about the globalized fields of accountancy, architecture, education, nursing, occupational therapy, physical therapy, and pharmacy.

There is a lot of work to be done by us to limit our GE to just the first year of college and to increase the number of major courses to cover three whole years. That work remains to be done, but fortunately need not be done at once.

What needs to be done at once is to respond to our lack of years of basic education. The Philippines is the only country in the world with 10 years of basic education; every other country has 12 (except for Myanmar, which has 11). All international agreements assume that students entering college have had more than 10 years of basic education. For example, both the Washington Accord and the Sydney Accord explicitly require 12 years of pre-university education and the Dublin Accord requires 11 years. Europeans always take 12 years to finish basic education.

There are two ways to increase our years of schooling to comply with our international commitments. One way is to insert one or two more years between high school and college. The other is to add one year to elementary school and one year to high school.

Both these ways have so many things going against them that they have not yet been implemented, despite increasing international pressure. DepEd has long been advocating adding two more years to basic education, but its proposal keeps falling on deaf political ears.

I have a modest proposal to break the impasse. The next DepEd secretary can solve this problem in one day. There is a catch: after he or she implements my proposal, he or she will almost certainly ge t fired. If you are willing to be in the Cabinet for only one day, you are free to use my idea. (To be continued)