Have you ever wondered how the state universities and colleges (SUCs) in the Cordilleras rank against each other? Well, wonder no more. Apparently, the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) conducts an Annual Performance Rating for SUCs and we have the results for you courtesy of Benguet State University (BSU). I’ve no idea how DBM does its ranking but it apparently looks at factors such as instruction, research and extension services, accreditation status, Professional Regulatory Commission passing rates, at marami pang iba.
Not surprisingly, given its status as the pioneering SUC in the Cordilleras, BSU tops the ranking with an over-all numerical rating of 5.8. The ranking and the scores of the region’s six SUCs are as follows:
1. Benguet State University (5.8)
2. Kalinga-Apayao State College (5.1).
3. Mountain Province State Polytechnic College (4.5)
4. Ifugao State College of Agriculture and Forestry (4.2)
5. Abra State Institute of Science and Technology (3.8)
6. Apayao State College (3.35)
The University of the Philippines in Baguio was apparently not included in this study maybe because it is more of a national state university rather than a regional one. Anyway, if you are from BSU and want to blow your school’s horn (“Ey pare, kami ang best SUC sa Cordi!”) you now have unquestionable empirical proof to back you up.
Now, if you are from the other SUCs and want to put BSUers in their place, say something like, “Dude, where did DBM get the expertise to rank schools? Aba, it can’t even balance the national budget which is suppose to be its main task, nakikisawsaw pa ito sa academic matters.”
INFO SOURCE: BSU Website. IMAGE CREDIT: UI-UC Library.
Dear Bill,
I just read your posting on ranking of state universities and colleges in the Cordilleras.
I agree with you. For sure, not many know how the DBM cooked-up the ranking of the SUCs. This is why school ranking often kicks-off controversies and raises a dash of skepticism among observers. Count me as one of them.
Here in the United States, many universities, including highly ranked ones, question both the data and the processes used by some of the ranking services, such as U.S News & World Report and Princeton Review.
Some years back, I recall the president of one U.S. Ivy-league school (Stanford University) challenging the U.S. News & World Report, ranking his school as number three. He claimed his school should be number one. Ditto for Harvard, Yale, and Princeton – they all claimed to be number one.
For the most part, ranking only brings to the fore the warp thinking that a graduate of one school is better than a graduate of another school – in disregard of other considerations.
Remember Sen. Santiago? Sometime ago, she ranted and let loose a barrage of vile language against the members of the Judicial Bar Council (JBC) when the latter nixed her bid for the Chief Justice post. She mocked at the members of JBC, who, she claimed, were mostly not graduates of the UP College of Law. She thought that only graduates of UP College of Law are good; all the rest are a bunch of mediocre law graduates. At one point, Santiago even said that former Chief Justice Panganiban graduated “only” from Far Eastern University.
Well, it’s just my two cents worth.
Mandy M. Dornagon, Esq.
Attorney at Law
http://attydornagon.com
Hi Mandy,
Thanks for dropping by and for adding your insightful comments to this post. I agree that rankings should not be taken at face value particularly because there are lots of intangibles that are just not measured in rankings. So it’s really best to view rankings with skepticism and not to swallow the results as if they are gospel truth.
Sadly, as you pointed out, rankings do reinforce our human tendency to think that one is a better graduate because s/he comes from a school that ranks higher than the other. Well, Miriam is a good example that this is not the case at all. hehehe.
On the other hand, rankings also have a good side in that it provides school administrators with a feedback mechanism as to the areas that they should improve on. I think this is the reason why some Thai universities welcomed the annual university rankings then being done by the now defunct AsiaWeek magazine.
hi bill, di kasama ang NV sa Cordi? O talagang di nakaabot sa top five ang NVSU? Nyeh… babain..:( 🙂
Hi Ferri,
Hindi kasama ang NV because I think they went by administrative regions. I think NVSU would be in a separate ranking for Region II SUCs but unfortunately I do not have the results for R-II.