By Atty. Antonio P. Pekas
Not just to MPSPC but also to other State Universities and Colleges, and also to other institutions. Am talking about political interference which is worse that Covid-19. Anything where politicians dip their sticky fingers always get destroyed. And down with it go the pervasive benefits it should be giving the people and society as a whole for generations to come.
There were politicians in Mountain Province who once thought they were invincible after getting away with corruption schemes for so many years that they thought they could buy the votes election after election. They forgot about karma that will inexorably fall on one’s head when it is ripened.
When these kingpin politicians in Mountain Province untimely died, their families were nowhere near the hallowed grounds they would have wanted them to be. Good thing, they were not “educated” by MPSPC. They got miseducated somewhere.
While MPSPC is doing good now, it was not doing good when a past politician and his cabal some years back interfered in the selection of the people who would have been running it.
The best SUCs in this country are those where politicians were unable to dip their sticky fingers into their internal affairs. Once those sticky fingers interfere, no more academic quality, much less excellence.
We trust that those who are running MPSPC now will maintain their balls to resist such kind of interference. If ever that happens, we are sure the intelligent and educated people of Mountain Province will be behind them.
When the time comes for them to retire, they will be praised or remembered by how much balls they had to resist such interference, or they will be vilified for the lack of it.
As to competence, that is presumed and we hope to see in the near future the good effects of the academic programs they have there. They have MAs (including an MPA and an MBA), vocational courses, and various PhDs. You name it, they’ve got it. One need not go out of the province to be educationally competitive with the rest of the world.
What graduates there might need would be exposure to the urban centers. I guess, such can be integrated in their programs which am sure they have already done. This is to remove the usual sense of insecurity that being a “probinsyano” engenders. Why not make students undergo OJT in big reputable companies, or undergo summer courses in other SUCs? For instance, their Forestry students would gain a lot if they spend sometime in the world’s “best forest laboratory” of UP Los Banos.
There will of course be financial constraints, but can’t that be partly solved by alumni sponsorship? We used to have journalism interns from universities in Ilocos Norte, Nueva Vizcaya, etc., but I declined accepting them anymore as it meant so much work on my part.
Then there is the advantage of being an SUC which MPSPC must exploit to the hilt. Its being free from market forces, or being not dependent on tuition fees to survive. So it should be able to maintain high academic standards especially with respect to the humanities and social sciences. Whether or not their students are taking technical courses, they should have a good knowledge about people, and the other basic courses. Without that, a student is not worthy of receiving a college diploma, much less from a state college. I have seen UP students whose graduation were delayed for failure to pass one of the four 3-unit english courses. Another one who was a genius of a writer who could write a term paper direct to the typewriter, was delayed in his graduation because when he took the first 3-unit math course in college, called Math 11, it became Math 44 because he took it four times. He later became a lawyer. That is well-rounded education. With such an education, the Mtn. Province voters might become more intelligent and would not be electing corrupt personalities anymore.
Lastly, there is the name—Mountain Province Polytechnic State College. It reminds me of the name of one contestant of The Voice USA a few years ago. His name was Mendeleyev Galileo Einstein Pythagoras Darwin Euclid Leonardo Alan Blitz. After mentioning his name, he said, I am not joking.
Can’t MPSPC have a nickname, a more marketable one, without having to change the law that created it?**
