IMPECCABLE and dedicated educators. Efficient curricula. Ample facilities and logistical support. Diligent students. Pro-active institutional management.

These, according to Director Janet B. Abuel of the Department of Budget and Management Regional Office I, are the basic requirements for the achievement of academic supremacy.

She underscored these Jan. 9 at the Teatro Ilocandia as she spoke before faculty, staff, students, and alumni during the Convocation and Achievers’ Day where she served as guest of honor and speaker.

According to her, education gives meaning to life.  “The experiences of our neighboring countries tell us that nothing succeeds better than education and good, old-fashioned hard work in a world environment of opportunities that encourages and nurtures our own national efforts to develop our own competitive advantage over other nations,” she asserted.

This, she said, impresses the need to acquire more than the average education for the Filipino to be set apart from the rest.  She cited data tagging the Philippines as the third largest English-speaking population in the world.  Surveys on international competitiveness, she pointed out, consistently recognize the country’s largely English-speaking and well-educated workforce as the country’s overriding competitive advantage.  “In recent times, however, the widespread erosion in the Filipino’s ability to speak, read, and write English is jeopardizing that competitive advantage of the local workforce over those of other countries,” she said. 

According to her, this is where the indispensable role of educational institutions should come in.  “I believe that if education gives meaning to life, then an excellent education will eventually give us better life.”

She pointed out that academic supremacy has a two-fold role:  quality knowledge base and provision of knowledge and training relevant to industry’s specific manpower needs.  “It is seeing to it that qualification and competencies match what the market needs to avoid job skills mismatch or ‘structural unemployment’ which is one major contributor of unemployment,” she said.

She emphasized that the pursuit of excellence should, nevertheless, be inherent to man despite the unpredictability of the future in view of challenges and barriers. “It is most effective when excellence is pursued because one owes it to himself and not because it is expected of or dictated upon him.  The pursuit of academic excellence is a continuing journey and we should never stop striving to be better than what we are now,” she said.