Is an expensive Ateneo education worth it?

DEMAND AND SUPPLY By Boo Chanco
The Philippine Star 03/31/2006
http://www.philstar.com/philstar/NEWS200603310711.htm

A week ago, I had mixed feelings about the graduation ceremony I attended at the Ateneo. I was a typical parent, happy and proud that my youngest child is through with college. I was also happy that it was the last such ceremony I had to attend in the oppressive high humidity heat of the Ateneo High School gym. I thought, given what we have paid the Jesuits in college tuition, they should have realized that parents have suffered enough and could have rewarded us by holding the ceremony in air conditioned comfort somewhere.

In fairness to the Jesuits, they did try to shorten the affair. When my son graduated six years ago, the Jesuits gave us a preview of what purgatory could be for forgotten souls. They had just one ceremony for all the college graduates and it took forever. Last Friday, they only had half of the graduating class… only the business, engineering and science majors. Still, I am sure everyone, graduates and parents, only had one thing in mind: Getting out of there.

That is why I didn't appreciate the over long address of this year's valedictorian. I realize that it is his day and if he wanted to speak all afternoon to early evening, that's his prerogative. In fact, when my son graduated, I had tears in my eyes when I joined the rousing standing ovation at the end of a most inspiring valedictory address of that year's top graduate: a blind mathematics major who had her secondary education in a public high school and got an Ateneo education on a full scholarship.

This year's valedictorian is a Development Studies major (don't ask me what that is) whose address sounded like a typical Atenean trying to "make bola" in their usual cute but predictable way. I suspect he would take on a career as a politician, end up as a member of Congress (or parliament) and feel right at home trying to sound important but saying nothing. That address was a missed opportunity. I was expecting someone who is supposed to be the best of the best, to say something that's thought provoking in the context of our troubled times.

It so happened I attended Sunday Mass that week at Ateneo's Church of the Gesu and the officiating priest, no less than Father Bienvenido Nebres, Ateneo president, said something that stuck to my mind the whole week. Father Nebres said they took a survey of their graduates to ask them what their thoughts are on the eve of their graduation.

In one word, success… personal success. That's expected. We are all dreaming of success, all our lives. They were asked to define success and most equated it with amassing power and wealth for their family's benefit. That's expected too, in today's success-driven society. Those are my thoughts too, for my own children.

But wait a minute… I thought the Jesuits are the best indoctrinators in history. Why are they now failing to get their graduates to think in terms of being "a man for others?" It is too early for these young people to be so into the ways of the world. When I was their age, I thought I could change the world. I know better now, but that's another story.

I just thought how refreshing it could have been if the address of Ateneo's top college graduate took up that survey Father Nebres talked about in his Sunday homily and gave us cynical men of the world some original thoughts on what it is to be young and privileged in a country teeming with poverty and immorality in high public (and private) offices.

He could have taken a survey of Ateneans in high places and made his conclusion of how close to the "man for others" ideal they have managed. Having obtained a legendary Jesuit education with top honors, he should have endeavored to titillate the mind, ruffled some feathers, not just deliver pages and pages of nice sounding platitudes as a typical Rotarian speaker would in the presence of Joc Joc Bolante. Or, devoid of such high expectations from a summa cum laude with a minor in philosophy, he could have kept his address short so we could all escape the oppressive heat in that gym a lot earlier.

A member of Ateneo's faculty with speaking lines that afternoon, was not any better. His introduction to the guest speaker, Manny Pangilinan, was longer than MVP's speech. The worse part is, the intro was printed in the program. It was as if, the Dean of the Gokongwei School of Business assumed he was before an audience of illiterates who didn't have the capacity to read Manny's impressive credentials.

Mercifully, MVP was inspirational and to the point. I just hope the rich kids he was addressing, including mine, managed to empathize with his rags to riches story… I don't think Manny would have been taken in as a barkada by the Ateneans waiting to receive their diplomas that afternoon. MVP simply wasn't the typical Atenean…not then… not today. Not too many Ateneans had to worry about jeepney fare home, as Manny said he did. Their main daily worry at Ateneo these days is getting a parking slot on campus.

With a lot of time on my hands that afternoon in Ateneo's purgatory, I amused myself by thinking of things like, what is really the value of an expensive Ateneo education? With two Ateneo graduates in my family, I should have a good idea. My son, an honor graduate, found it useless as a credential to get an interesting entry level job in the US, which was why he had to go to graduate school quickly. But he once told me, it was valuable in how it taught him to think… to think rationally. That, to me, is worth the tuition fee.

Then again, two of my daughter's friends found jobs as stewardesses in an Asian airline. I am not sure you need an Ateneo education to demonstrate how to use the life vest and serve meals in an airplane. But the starting salary, at over P80,000 a month, is nothing to sneeze at, specially for a young, single, fresh graduate. It certainly beats a local call center job. And the adventure could be a good post graduate education in life as well. It is just that I am bothered by the mismatch in the allocation of a scarce economic resource, a good education is such, in our third world country. Couldn't we just have a two year finishing school to produce stewardesses for export?

The way I see it, the concept of Ateneo's educational philosophy — combining the technical and the philosophical, the arts and the sciences and training the young mind how to think rationally– makes it valuable. It is the monoculture of upper class kids that bother me. That's why I can't help wondering if UP, my alma mater, would have provided a better education if only because it provided a more real world environment.

But in answer to my question, the cost of an Ateneo education is worth it… but only if the graduate recognizes its intrinsic value and does something about it in his life.