Palace concerned over PH universities’ failure to rank among world’s top 300

MANILA, Philippines – Malacañang on Tuesday expressed concern over the failure of the country’s top universities’ to rank among the world’s top institutions but Communications Development Secretary Ricky Carandang said the problem was nothing new.

“It is a cause for concern. Remember that the President ultimately wants to create an economic environment where people can have jobs; where jobs are available and they’re plentiful and they can be filled by our own people,” Carandang said in Tuesday’s news briefing in Malacañang.

“The fact that our educational institutions has not ranked very well I think is, first of all, it’s not new. But certainly that’s a concern for the Department of Education and it’s something that we need to do something about,” he added.

London-based Quacquarelli Symonds, a company specializing in education and study abroad, ranked the country’s top universities outside of the world’s top 300 in its latest rankings for 2011 to 2012.

“I’m not sure if [President Aquino] needs to give particular instructions. As I said, this [problem] has been around for quite some time. It wasn’t just this year that our academic institutions did not fare so well compared to others and the DepEd has always said that their thrust is two: number one is to provide access to education for more people and, number two, is to provide a better quality of education for those of us who are able to have access to the education,” Carandang said.

“So it’s two-pronged from the start. Improving access and improving quality. And I think the report really just emphasizes the need to improve quality,” he added.