In this academy, councilors get to realize their college dreams

TAGUM CITY—It’s a university without walls or borders, and its students, mostly local elected officials, can earn bachelor’s and master’s degrees in just over a year for less than P100,000.

Touted as an innovation in higher education, the Legislative Academy aims to revolutionize the education of public servants, equipping them with skills and knowledge to better serve their constituents while earning college degrees.

“What they learn during class are realistic and practical lessons applicable to their day-to-day duties,” says Dr. Helario Caminero, its executive director and himself a councilor of Kapalong town in Davao del Norte.

While officials attend many seminars and workshops during their term, “sadly, … they learn very little and worse, turn these workshops into lakbay-laag (junkets), wasting people’s money,” Caminero says.

The highly specialized learning system, which was launched recently by the Philippine Councilors’ League (PCL), seeks to create a paradigm shift among local legislators by making their class a seminar-school type, he adds.

The response from member-councilors was overwhelming, according to Caminero, in spite of the indifference and outright pessimism shown by some when the program was floated a year ago.

According to Ronald Carcellar, Legislative Academy board chair, the plan was hatched over a bowl of odong (thin noodles cooked with sardines, a popular lunch dish in the Visayas and Mindanao) when he, Caminero and other league officers talked about the need to provide an alternative education to their colleagues.

“It was born out of passion and commitment,” says Carcellar, who is also a councilor of Pura town in Cebu.

Caminero says a survey they conducted revealed that 20 to 25 percent of the country’s 16,700 municipal and city councilors do not have a college degree. Five percent of that number did not even finish high school.

“It’s a pity that many councilors who have no college degrees end up as job order (JO) workers of the municipality after their terms as elected officials. Their being a councilor was supposedly an equivalent to a department or section head at the LGU but since they lack academic qualifications, they could only be hired to lower positions no matter how much experience they have,” Carcellar says.

Partnership

Classes in the Legislative Academy are held in urban centers across the country, with one regional capital serving as hub. The custom-made curriculum was designed by a consortium with the University of Makati (UMak).

Graduates are to be conferred degrees under the UMak system, Caminero says.

“The program is a parallel initiative between the PCL and UMak in providing innovative programs,” says dean Ederson Tapia of UMak’s College of Governance and Public Policy.

“We were on the process of redesigning and doing drastic changes in the conduct of learning when this program from the PCL was approached to us through Dr. Caminero. We immediately had a connection.”

Forty professors from top universities and colleges in Manila compose the faculty of the PCL-LA. Unlike the typical education system, in which students go to school, this time the professors themselves go around the country to meet students grouped in 50s, says Carcellar.

700 students

The academy currently has 700 enrollees. Caminero says he expects the figure to double in the next enrollment.

Discussions, group works and sharing of best practices in local governance are the  typical “classroom activities,” Caminero says. “This is to ensure the students’ interest and enthusiasm are maintained, and they can gain new insights and learn new ideas they might apply back to their respective constituents.”

Tapia says the usual written and oral examinations are given, ensuring that UMak maintains its standard of excellence.

The first class opened Wednesday in a budget hotel in Tagum City, attended by over a hundred people, mostly councilors and a handful of board members and vice mayors from Davao region. Among them was Parañaque City Councilor and actress Alma Moreno.

Classes in Cebu and Metro Manila are expected to begin next month.

The format is a “great revolution in the conduct of seminars among local legislators and a very classic example of a borderless education,” says Carcellar.

“This is to show that education is not just confined in the four corners of a classroom. Where can you find a series of seminars that confer baccalaureate and masteral degrees on participants? Even the DILG (Department of the Interior and Local Government) was dumbstruck and could not believe a program such as this would be possible,” he says.

At P75,000, the whole baccalaureate program takes 14 to 20 months, leading to a degree of Bachelor of Arts in Political Science major in local governance administration.

Subjects include fiscal management, urban planning, gender and development, and basics of local governance.

The master’s program confers a degree of Master in Development Management and Governance similar to a Master in Public Administration.

The PCL-LA is also planning to offer a doctoral program, says PCL national chair and Tagum City Councilor Alan Zulueta.

The courses cost P4,400 per three units for the AB degree and P5,000 for the MA degree. The baccalaureate degree follows a 36-unit curriculum while the master’s has 42.

Zulueta says he hope all councilors would support the continuity of the program.

“We are bringing this unique kind of education to our fellow councilors’ doorstep so their responsibilities to their constituents won’t be compromised. We are minimizing expenses while maximizing opportunities,” he says.