Last Saturday I was with 3 of my friends, all high school classmates. One of them was here on vacation because he moved to Toronto and we decided to meet up with him because he’s going back to Canada soon. This friend of mine finished 4 of 5 years of his Electrical and Computer Engineering course here in the University of the Philippines. Then he got the news that his family was migrating so he needed to finish his degree in Canada. I was shocked to find out that absolutely none of his units were credited by the University he’s at now. So he’s back at first year college taking things all over again. Apparently the Canadians don’t think we Filipinos are good enough for them, coming from a 3rd world country. My friend told me they also looked down on the Indians too. It’s also would have been useless for him to just finish his course here in the Philippines because he wouldn’t be allowed to practice there either. I’m surprised at this attitude by the Canadians. How close minded and snobbish can they be! Now my friend is showing them that our Filipino education is indeed world class since he has a perfect average so far. His Filipino education is allowing him to breeze through the classes where all the others are failing miserably.
July 24, 2006...11:11 am
Our Filipino Education Is Not Good Enough? B*llsh*t!
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4 Comments
July 24, 2006 at 3:36 pm
It’s tough to be a foreign student. Standards and regulations vary so much from country to country. I had to retake a couple of genetics courses in grad school and moaned and groaned about it but like your friend, it was a breeze (sort of
As long as he’s got the time, he can consider it a refresher course, but otherwise, it does seem harsh to require him to retake everything. I hoep they’ve given him partial credit for some!
July 24, 2006 at 9:26 pm
That’s not limited to Canada. I do know that some U.S. universities do the same. If he were migrating to the U.S., it’s better to finish the course there. But he’ll still need to take a licensure exam before he can practice, as should be expected. I don’t think it’s a case of Canada looking down on the quality of Philippine education. They are simply not aware of what is being taught in U.P. We can’t expect everyone to know about that.
It could have helped if, before he left, he had asked the Canadian university what their transfer policies are. Would they have considered giving him some credits if it was done on a university-to-university arrangement? At any rate, he’s lost time, but the courses will be easy for him now.
July 26, 2006 at 9:07 pm
Hmmm. I got a scholarship in Australia back in college and same was the case I would go back to first year college despite one year before graduation so I decided not to anymore. Though I checked out the curriculum and I could tell that even if you combine the education of senior students in UP, Lasalle, Ateneo their freshman education was still insane. Sorry for the spoiler there Angelo but that’s just the way it is but that doesn’t mean there is no hope. As long as there is the Internet and you know how to maximize it’s usage plus a creativity would not put Filipinos behind that much at least individually if the government can’t do anything about it.
August 5, 2006 at 2:33 am
You have to consider that your friend has it easy because of the quality of his private school education. I’ve lived in a province (Naga City) for six years. Remember all those horror stories you hear in the news about the poor quality of our public education? Hardly exaggerated, sad to say.