The emcee at the graduation yesterday of the University of the Philippines Diliman’s Class of 2008 said something that’s a bit disturbing: some 30 percent of the UP Diliman graduates were honor students. This means that one in three is a cum laude, a magna cum laude or a summa cum laude.
Either the Class of 2008, the Centennial batch, is extremely gifted, or UP teachers have become more lenient and their standards have dropped.
Maintaining UP’s high standards is important if it wishes to remain the country’s premier academic institution. But UP graduates aren’t the best anymore. (My son, who worked at the human resources department of a tech company in Makati, talks about UP graduates who are rejected because they couldn’t pass company exams or couldn’t converse comfortably and confidently in English).
How sad. Aside from the fact that standards have fallen, morals too are loosening. Knowing what is right and what is wrong is something a UP graduate should know, but there are indications UP is producing graduates who don’t, going by what was heard during the 2008 Recognition Rites of the National College of Public Administration Governance.
