The results of recent government licensure examinations indicate that graduates of Metro Manila-based schools no longer have a lock on the top spots in the annual rites of professional passage. A graduate of Asian Development Foundation College of Tacloban City, Rommel Edusma, topped this year’s licensure tests for certified public accountants.
The Top 10 CPA board passers include graduates of the University of San Carlos and Southwestern University in Cebu City, Xavier University in Cagayan de Oro City and Polytechnic University of the Philippines (Sto. Tomas, Batangas).
A product of Cebu Institute of Medicine, Raymund Sia Li headed the list of passers of the 2014 physician licensure examination, together with a fellow alumnus and a Davao Medical School Foundation graduate.
In last year’s bar exams, graduates of the University of Batangas, University of Cebu and University of San Carlos shared top honors with perennial topnotchers from the University of the Philippines and Ateneo de Manila.
The other licensure exams conducted by the Professional Regulation Commission this year also saw graduates of schools outside Metro Manila besting their counterpart for top honors.
What’s more, the percentages of graduates of non-Metro Manila schools who pass the tests are often at par with, and in some cases better than, those who were educated in the nation’s capital.
Education
Until recent years, the entry of “provincial” licensure examinees in the passers’ honor roll was considered either a fluke or a stroke of luck, rather than proof of academic excellence. For decades, majority of Filipinos believed quality tertiary (or post high school) education was available only from prestigious or well-established colleges and universities in Metro Manila.
This impression is understandable because the metropolis was then, and still is, the seat of political and economic power in the country. With its huge financial resources, “Imperial Manila” [as some politicians are wont to derisively call it] was able to build and maintain superior educational facilities, and provide for ably educated and highly trained teaching personnel.
Given this mind-set, people from the provinces who can afford it sent their children to Metro Manila for further studies, unmindful of its polluted environment, high cost of living and unstable peace and order condition.
The risks and costs of education in the urban jungle were looked at as small prices to pay for quality education. A diploma bearing a Metro Manila address was considered an almost sure assurance of making the grade in the licensure exam and, later, getting lucrative employment in [where else?] Metro Manila or elsewhere in the world.
Development
That impression may no longer hold true today. The superb showing of graduates of schools outside Metro Manila in licensure exams is proof that quality tertiary education is not the private preserve of educational institutions in the nation’s capital.
Parents who live in other parts of the country, especially in highly urbanized cities, need not send their children to Metro Manila for further first-rate studies.
They can acquire equivalent, if not better, education in schools, for example, in Cebu City or Bacolod City, if they live in the Visayas; or in Davao City or Cagayan de Oro City, if they are based in Mindanao. This development should change the longstanding perception of many businesses that the talents and skills they need for their operation can be sourced only from graduates of schools in Metro Manila.
It is common knowledge in the business circles that HR staffs tend to favor graduates from Metro Manila schools, especially those coming from the schools where their big bosses graduated from, in the hiring process. The job applications of the so-called “promdis” [the pejorative term used to describe people from the provinces] are often placed at the bottom of file unless some politician or influential personality within the company intervenes on their behalf.
Initiative
In the instances where the non-preferred applicants get the job, they are under pressure to prove they were worth taking in or otherwise show they are as good, if not better, than their Metro Manila counterpart. And if they happen to work with graduates of supposedly elite Metro Manila schools who suffer from misplaced superiority complex, they have to endure subtle discriminatory treatment or made to feel they do not belong in their company.
Thus, it is heartwarming to see that two of the country’s prominent auditing firms have employed, and publicly advertised such action, graduates of provincial schools who shone in recent CPA licensure tests. Earlier, the Office of the Solicitor General, then headed by now Supreme Court Associate Justice Francis Jardeleza, recruited into its ranks some graduates from law schools outside Metro Manila who made it to the Top Ten.
Whether they like or not, consciously or unconsciously, these new recruits will be looked at as “poster boys or girls” by students of schools outside Metro Manila who may want to follow in their footsteps.
Hopefully, businesses and government offices that may be inclined to take a similar action will do so in good faith and for the right intentions.
There is no room for tokenism (or the practice of hiring somebody from a minority group to prevent criticism and give the appearance that it treats its people fairly) because it would be grossly unfair to the affected parties.
It will take some time before the prejudice against graduates of non-Metro Manila schools is removed. But the right steps toward that direction are being taken.
Watch out, Metro Manila schools. Your days of dominance in licensure exams are numbered.
For comments, please send your email to “rpalabrica@inquirer.com.ph.”