Neoliberalism in the UP

Neoliberalism in the UP

        Since its founding in 1908, the University of the Philippines (UP) has been
inextricably linked with neoliberalism in essence. A relatively new term,
neoliberalism is associated with free market methods and fewer state
restrictions on business operations and economic development – which
also goes by the name of globalization marked by liberalization, deregulation,
and privatization. Its alternatives are said to be economic nationalism, fair
trade, and anti-capitalism or socialism.
     
         U. S. imperialism at the turn of the century ushered in the conditions
of globalization such that the Philippines as a colony became the source of
raw materials and cheap labor used in manufacturing and agri-business in
the United States. At the same time, the Philippines became a dumping
ground for US monopoly capitalism – flooding the country with goods
and services needed in its “benevolent assimilation” or pacification campaign.
In 1907, a Philippine Assembly was elected by propertied voters
(workers, peasants and women had not yet been enfranchised to vote) and
one of their first bills was to establish a state university. Hence, the UP was
founded at a time when the colonial government was at the height of its
pacification campaign against Filipino “insurgents.” The colonial rulers
needed to train the new bureaucracy made up of Filipinos many of whom
would be educated in the US through pensionadoships. The Philippine
Normal School was earlier established to train teachers using English as the
medium of instruction in the public school system. UP was to become a
key part of the ideological apparatus of the colonial government.
   
      Murray Bartlett in his inaugural address as UP president in 1911
stated that “the surest way of bringing about Filipinization of the government
is through the university where skilled and efficient public servants will be
trained for the various bureaus.” Thus, the colonial policy was to co-opt
and train the elite which would then serve as a surrogate for the colonial
establishment. Hence, after the granting of formal independence in 1946,
the national leaders who formed part of the ruling class have continued to
serve American interests.

            The first era of globalization is said to have occurred after the
shocks of the First World War. Free trade policies imposed at the turn of
the century operated more fully during this period marked by (a) the
development of cash crops (sugar, abaca, and coconut) and extractive
industries (metal ore) for export – the raw materials needed by American
industry; and (b) the importation of consumer goods (including cultural
fare) mainly from the US. When the US stock market crashed in 1929, the
Philippines like the rest of the world felt the effects of the Great Depression
that occurred during the 30s. The second era of globalization occurred after the Second World War, and the UP played a key role in the development of units geared to the needs of the Cold War – the so-called struggle of the Free World against the Soviet Union. If the UP during the colonial period produced efficient articulators of colonial ideology, the university after the war produced anti-communist and neocolonial intellectuals and professionals. US funding agencies and foundations had seen to that. Under President Vidal Tan (1952-56), the university became “an American.conduit of anti-communist propaganda”. With the Cold War at its height, nationalist and liberal-minded professors were victims of McCarthyite witch-hunting. The Military Intelligence Service surveilled the campus and recruited agents from the
students and the faculty.

         The International Cooperation Agency (ICA), the forerunner of
the US Agency for International Development (USAID), provided training
grants for UP personnel. The Fulbright-Smith-Mundt program under the
US State Department gave fellowships for UP faculty members and brought
in American professors. Cornell University assisted UP Los Banos in its
programs. Michigan State University aided the Institute of Public
Administration. Stanford helped the colleges of engineering and business
administration. Under these programs, “agents of US imperialism in the
guise of exchange professors and academic technicians swamped the
campus.”

         Other foundations that participated in co-opting the “sympathies
of the Filipino intelligentsia” included the Asia Foundation, Ford Foundation,
Rockefeller Foundation, and the US Philippine Education Foundation which
provided grants and scholarships. The result was a “bumper harvest of
Cold Warriors” who became the deans and directors of the university, and
eventually technocrats and cabinet members of the government. Some were
later promoted to key positions in the World Bank. The administration of President Vicente Sinco (1958-62), who tried to follow the liberal tradition of Rafael Palma and Bienvenido Gonzalez,
was under scrutiny of the Hannah Survey Mission which set criteria for
higher education within the “ideological limits of what the Americans saw
as essential for enlightened citizenship and leadership in a free and democratic
society” (PDF 1984).
The Hannah recommendations were implemented during the term
of Carlos P. Romulo (1962-68). The Americanization of UP intensified
with the proliferation of units and programs with neo-colonial and neoliberal
ideas of development. Under Salvador P. Lopez’s (1969-74) notion of the
university as critic of society and agent of social change, progressive students
and faculty members examined the neocolonial state, using heretofore
proscribed frameworks of analysis. Rallies, demonstrations and teach-ins
became accepted forms of mass education.
But this radical trend was cut short when martial law was declared
in September 1972, and the first target for control was the educational
system. A Marcos decree transformed UP into a System and created
autonomous units, such as the UP Los Banos, to apply the university’s
academic and intellectual expertise and physical resources to achieve the
goals of the “New Society.” The successor to S.P. Lopez, who was eventually
fired after criticizing the dictatorship, provided the ideological justification
for martial law by stressing the pre-eminence of collective rights over
individual rights in his investiture speech.
The UP finally became the “biggest consulting firm for the national
government and private business,” “a think-tank of the Marcos regime,”
and “a pool of trainors, speakers and resource persons involved in
‘development’ agencies of the government.” (PDF 1984: 13) New UP
units were established by decree: (1) the Philippine Center for Advanced
Studies (1973), autonomous like UPLB with dubious programs like the
Institute for Strategic Studies; (2) the Philippine Center for Economic
Development, to provide the government with an “adequate research base
for economic planning and policy formation” and working closely with College of Business Administration described as a “a conduit of corporate, multinational ideology legitimized as academic research;” (3) the National Engineering Center, intended to ensure that the “number of engineering graduates would match the requirement of industry and economy”; and (4) the UP Visayas whose rationale for establishment depended mainly on foreign loans and grants, with the World Bank giving generously to develop
its campus in Miag-ao, said to be ideal for fishery development.

        Long established units were revitalized or reoriented to be useful
to the Marcos regime and big business: the Statistical Center, College of
Public Administration, School of Labor and Industrial Relations, School
of Economics, College of Education, College of Law and Law Center,
College of Engineering, College of Business Administration, Institute of
Mass Communication, and Institute of Small-Scale Industries.
UPLB is a classic example of how the university has been used by
funding institutions for their own purposes. In 1964, the World Bank began
helping the College of Agriculture develop as an instrument for the bank’s
concept of rural development among others. As conceived by former WB
president Robert McNamara (who became US defense secretary during
the Vietnam War), the strategy of rural development called for the creation
of “small, capitalist producers in the countryside to pre-empt the Vietnamtype
liberation movement. This new stratum of petty kulaks can serve as a
cushion to absorb and diffuse pressure from the masses, landless peasants
and rural workers” (PDF 1984: 18). There were other dubious US
undertakings in UPLB.

       The World Bank, with its assistance of $6 million to the College of
Agriculture for improvement of its facilities, then embarked on a sustained
program in education, in conjunction with other US foundations. The World
Bank funded the setting up of the national polytechnic system, 10 regional
manpower centers, 13 experimental agricultural high schools in 1973-78,
the Instructional Materials Corporation to prepare the textbooks in science,
math, social studies, English and Filipino (1976-81), agricultural programs
in UPLB and the College of Veterinary Medicine in 1976-81, and the Ten-
Year Program for Development of Elementary Education in 1981-1990
(Ordoñez 2003: 93). Making Education Work, prepared by technocrats from the UP for
the Education Commission headed by former UP President Edgardo
Angara, reflects the World Bank’s neoliberal ideas of education and
development. For whom? One may ask. Renato Constantino answered the
question way back in 1978: The World Bank wants an educational system that will meet the
manpower needs of the transnationals; that will facilitate the growth
of agri-business production of the global market and that will
insure the internationalization of the entire student population of
values and outlooks, supportive of the global capitalist system.
(Constantino 1978) In this World Bank strategy, the UP played a key role during the years of
the dictatorship. UP after EDSA has not veered away from the control of the
World Bank. In fact, the university under Emil Javier, a product of UPLB,
adopted the Medium-Term Philippine Development Program of President
Ramos, otherwise known as “Philippines 2000,” which followed the World
Bank prescription for an export-oriented economy dominated by transnationals
with the Philippines providing cheap, English literate and docile
workers. UP Plan 2008 (anticipating the university centennial) has all the
features of neoliberal development of the institution and seems to be the
framework of the present UP administration. Even the Department of English tried to get into the scene by
sponsoring during Javier’s term two conferences on the theme of “English
and Global Competitiveness.” UP professors particularly from the School
of Economics and Business Administration, several of whom became
cabinet members, are particularly vocal proponents of globalization. The
contagion has spread to the University Council which approved the revised
general education program, which has the ideological underpinning of
neoliberal thought.
     
           With the national government scrimping on education including
the UP budget, the university administration is now compelled to pursue
what it has believed all along – raise funds from the commercialization of
its “idle assets” and increase of tuition fees. The UP under the present
leadership will not be wanting in physical and intellectual resources in making
the neoliberal type of education work on campus – a model for other state
colleges and universities.