This is the twenty-second installment of The Cocoon Goes Global, a series that gives a sense of what the philosophy profession looks like outside of the Anglophone West. This guest post is written by Rowena Azada-Palacios, currently on leave from her post as an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Ateneo de Manila University. She is currently based in England with her husband and two children. She is completing her PhD in Philosophy of Education at University College London, where she is also a Postgraduate Teaching Assistant.
The Philippines is an archipelago in Southeast Asia, south of Taiwan and east of Vietnam. Its 100 million inhabitants speak more than 180 languages, but because of half a century of colonization by the United States in the first half of the 20th century, English is one of its official languages, and is the main language of instruction in higher education, as well as the main language of law and business. The country’s culture has also been influenced by 300 years of colonization by Spain from the 16th to the 19th century, making Christianity the most dominant religion.
The oldest existing university in the Philippines is the Pontifical and Royal University of Santo Tomas in Manila (or University of Santo Tomas for short), founded by the Catholic Dominican order in 1611, and many of the universities in the country, including many of the top-ranked ones, were similarly founded by Catholic religious orders during the Spanish colonial period. In the early 20th century, however, all universities began to restructure in line with the American model of higher education, and the American influence on higher education remains strong today.
Today, the Philippines has around 2,000 higher education institutions that offer 4-year bachelor’s degree programs. Around 15% of these are public, and the rest are private. For a higher education institution in the Philippines to be classified as a ‘university’ rather than a ‘college’, it must fulfill a number of preconditions, including offering at least two doctoral programs. A parallel set of preconditions must be met for a state-run institution to be classified as a ‘local university’, including the offering of at least two graduate-level (including master’s level) programs. As of 2021, fourteen Philippine universities are part of the QS World University Rankings list of top 650 universities in Asia.
To my knowledge, five universities in the Philippines offer doctoral programs in philosophy; these are Ateneo de Manila University, De La Salle University Manila, the University of the Philippines (in its Diliman campus in Quezon City), the University of Santo Tomas, and the University of San Carlos. The first four are all in Metro Manila, the Philippine capital, whereas the University of San Carlos is in Cebu City. The specializations of these philosophy departments differ from each other. The University of the Philippines-Diliman is strong in the analytic tradition. Ateneo de Manila’s strength is in continental philosophy. The University of Santo Tomas has strengths in both Catholic philosophy and continental philosophy. However, all of these departments have a mix of philosophers from different traditions and with different areas of expertise, and East Asian philosophy is becoming one area of growing interest among younger philosophers. These five institutions all offer visiting professorships, and some actively hire visiting professors each year. Although four of these five universities (except the University of the Philippines) were originally founded by Catholic religious orders, faculty members do not need to be Catholic to teach at them.
Other departments around the country offer BA Philosophy and MA Philosophy programs. BA Philosophy is a popular pre-law program among undergraduates, and is offered by universities in many of the major cities across the country. Students who take the MA Philosophy are often seeking an academic career in philosophy and intend to pursue a doctorate later on, or intend to teach philosophy at seminaries. Since 2013, philosophy has become a required subject in high school, and some students who intend to teach philosophy at senior high school take an MA in Philosophy, or take master’s courses in philosophy alongside a graduate degree in education.
Beyond these universities, opportunities to teach philosophy at the higher education level are also numerous, for those inclined towards a teaching-oriented career. The Philippines has a mandatory general education (GE) curriculum that all undergraduate students must undergo, and one of the mandatory courses is ethics, which is typically taught from a philosophical perspective. Many Catholic universities also have additional philosophy requirements for its undergraduate students. (At Ateneo de Manila, for example, all undergraduate students must take three philosophy classes, each of which is the equivalent of three American credits.) Because of these mandatory courses, most philosophy departments also act as service departments (that is, departments mandated to teach GE courses to students based in other departments), even when they offer their own philosophy degree programs.
The teaching load of philosophers in the Philippines thus tends to be heavy, relative to the load of tenured philosophers in the UK and the US. Even at the top-ranked universities (which have relatively lighter teaching loads than others), most philosophers usually teach at least 4 classes per semester, with 3 contact hours per week class, or a total of 12 hours of classroom teaching per week. (At other universities the teaching load can be as much as double this.) Each of these classes is likely to have around 30 students. (The lecture/seminar system, whereby lectures are given to large groups of students, and seminars are conducted with smaller discussion groups, is not commonly used in philosophy.) Because philosophy departments are usually service departments, it is often the case that these classes are the same course (e.g., all Ethics classes, or three Ethics classes, plus one specialist philosophy class for students in the philosophy program), so the philosopher may only have to work on one or two preparations per semester despite the high number of classroom contact hours. Visiting professors will usually be asked to teach to their strength.
Because of the heavy teaching load, the research demands as a precondition for tenure (called “permanency” in the Philippines) tend to be lower than in the UK and the US. Although research output is a requirement for promotion, there is typically less pressure to produce high volumes of research as a requirement for permanency. Philippine labor laws also prohibit the retention of full-time academics without permanency beyond three years; after three years, the institution must either grant the academic permanency, or let them go. As a result, philosophers tend to be granted permanency relatively early in their academic careers.
Research funding in philosophy tends to be very limited, because most government research funds are frequently allocated to the sciences. Some universities offer competitive research grants that faculty members can apply for, and others have research load schemes, which allow a small number of faculty members to take a lighter teaching load in exchange for a heavier research load, for a definite period of time (e.g., one academic year).
The system of academic ranks in the Philippines is similar to that in the US. Many universities hire Instructors, especially for service departments. These are faculty members who have completed a masters’ degree in the discipline, and they are typically assigned to teach undergraduate GE courses. The next rank is Assistant Professor, which is the entry-level rank for academics with doctorates, and usually the terminal rank for academics without doctorates. At universities that do not have degree programs in philosophy, philosophy departments are typically service departments at which most hires are either Instructors or Assistant Professors. The Assistant Professor rank is followed by the ranks Associate Professor, and finally Professor. To be considered for promotion to the next rank, academics are required to show evidence of achievements and contributions in research, teaching, administration (university service), and outreach/extension (external or public-facing service).
Some of the top universities have active exchange programs with universities abroad, which results in the presence of a small percentage of foreign students (usually from Europe or the rest of Asia). A small number of foreign students, either nationals of other Asian countries or foreign nationals who have Filipino ancestry, also come to the Philippines for their undergraduate degrees. However, by and large, most of the students at Philippine universities are Filipinos who completed their prior schooling in the Philippines.
The quality of basic education in the Philippines in general is uneven. On average, Filipino students score poorly in PISA; however, the top secondary schools in the Philippines produce excellent graduates, and alumni of undergraduate programs of the top universities in the Philippines frequently flourish in highly-ranked postgraduate programs abroad. Students at these universities tend to be hardworking, well-read, and eager to contribute to class discussions. They tend to be fluent in English, with many of them speaking it as a first language or a comfortable second language. Most universities regulate students’ class attendance, typically requiring them to attend at least 70% of all class sessions, a policy which also encourages class participation. Universities also tend to have stricter rules than in UK and US universities. Some universities require students to wear uniforms or adhere to dress codes. Smoking and drinking alcoholic beverages on university campuses is prohibited by law, and most universities have relatively strict discipline codes. Student life on university campuses tends to be very active, with students participating in a wide variety of societies and student-run organizations. Culturally, young adults tend to be deferential and respectful towards faculty members (referring to them as “Sir” or “Ma’am”), but there is also a strong sense of collegiality, familiarity, and friendliness on university campuses, including between faculty members and students.
Outside of conventional universities, there are opportunities to teach in other educational institutions as well. As mentioned above, philosophy is a mandatory subject in senior high school; however, philosophers who wish to teach in senior high schools must typically fulfill the mandatory teaching qualification requirements (teacher preparation courses and the successful completion of the national licensure exam) within the first few years after having been hired. Undergraduate-level philosophy is also taught at Roman Catholic seminaries that offer post-secondary school preparation for ministry (called “major seminaries”), and at ecclesiastical schools of theology, which offer degrees recognised by the Roman Catholic Church. In line with the traditional Roman Catholic view that philosophy is the ancilla theologiae, philosophy at these institutions is offered to prepare students to study theology later on. Thus, most of the students at these institutions are in training to be priests, or are undergoing required training as members of religious communities [nuns or religious brothers]), although some of them may be lay people looking to work for the Church, such as in the role of pastoral workers. Some of these institutions (e.g., St. Thomas of Villanova Institute in Quezon City, Metro Manila, run by the Augustinian order; St. Camillus College Seminary in Marikina, Metro Manila, run by the Camillian order; San Pablo Seminary, Baguio City, run by the Catholic diocese of Baguio) offer a full bachelor’s degree in philosophy. Faculty members at seminaries and theological institutes are a mix of clergy, members of religious orders, and laypersons with advanced degrees.
The largest philosophy society in the country is the Philosophical Association of the Philippines, which runs at least two national conferences per year, apart from smaller events throughout the year. Other notable societies are the Philippine National Philosophical Research Society, the Philosophy Circle of the Philippines, and the Philosophical Association of Visayas and Mindanao, each of which holds annual events. There are also smaller regional associations, and a women philosophers’ association as well. Philippine universities have also hosted various conferences of international philosophy societies over the years. Ateneo de Manila University, for example, hosted the World Congress of the Conférence Mondiale des Institutions Universitaires Catholiques de Philosophie (COMIUCAP) in 2008, and the Asian Association of Christian Philosophers conferences in both 2013 and 2015. The University of Santo Tomas was scheduled to host the COMIUCAP World Congress in 2020, but this was postponed because of the pandemic. Individual philosophers, especially at the top philosophy departments, are also often active in regional and international societies related to their specific areas of interest.
A few observations are particularly relevant to visiting or immigrant professors. First, Philippine universities have a relatively low proportion of foreign faculty, and hiring universities are charged high costs and must fulfill a range of government bureaucratic requirements to sponsor the visas of foreign faculty members. An additional point of consideration is the cost of living in the Philippines relative to earnings. The salary that an academic in the Philippines receives is sufficient to cover the cost of living there, which is roughly a quarter of the cost of living in the US or the UK. However, it may not be enough to cover any continued expenses that the academic may still be paying for back in their home country.
As for living in the Philippines: as someone who lived most of my adult life in the Philippines, it is difficult for me to think of this from a visitor’s or newcomer’s perspective. But as someone who is currently based in London and who has frequently visited New York and California, I can make some comparisons, specifically between London and American cities, and Manila. Many things aren’t too different. Manila has the typical conveniences of a major metropolis, but is more similar to an American city than a British (or European) one. Manila has many large malls and supermarkets that have a variety of international ingredients. Pop culture has a heavy American influence, and American music, movies, and television shows are readily available for consumption, apart from Philippine and Asian (currently, mostly Korean) fare. There are, of course, differences too. I don’t miss the inefficiencies of Manila: the lack of a good public transportation system and the terrible traffic jams. I also don’t miss the humidity of the summer months, the city’s air pollution, the lack of socioeconomic equality, nor the political and governance-related problems that the country is currently facing. I do terribly, terribly miss the variety of good food (both Philippine food and other cuisines), and I miss always being only a few hours away from a beach or some other natural paradise. I miss most the warmth and humor of the people, my Filipino students’ eagerness and enthusiasm for philosophy, and above all, how easy it is there to make and keep friends.
Thank you to Danna Aduna and Mark Raftery-Skehan for their input
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