methinks...21 February 1993

Two decades late

Today, J. Conrado ``Joly'' Benitez will be inaugurated as president of the Philippine Women's University. He should have been inaugurated as PWU president about 20 years ago, but he chose to go into government service instead.

At the time of the EDSA Revolt, Joly was Mrs. Imelda Marcos' deputy in the Ministry of Human Settlements -- and his last official (?) act was to pay a boatman P5,000 to paddle him across the Pasig to Malaca$ang, where he would join the Marcoses just before they were flown into exile.

One wonders how different things would have been if Joly had decided to stick to the academic world. From his youth, he was groomed to head the PWU.

It was on this understanding that he went off to get a Ph.D. in development education at Stanford University under such professors as Paul Hanna, Robert Textor, Martin Carnoy and Hans Weiler. The Filipinos on campus at the time expected him to be made PWU president in fact if not in name within two or three years after his return to the Philippines.

The Filipinos at Stanford expected that only one of them would become a university president before Joly. That was Mauyag Tamano, who was old enough to be Joly's father and already was vice president of Mindanao State University. Dr. Tamano, now our ambassador to Kuwait, did succeed Dr. Antonio Isidro as MSU president.

But Joly decided to go into government -- and some of his contemporaries went on to become university presidents before Joly got around to enjoying his academic birthright.

While Gary Lising was cracking jokes at the expense of the deputy minister of human settlements (``A jolibee is a crooked hamburger'') Bienvenido Nebres was president of the Ateneo de Manila University (he is now president of Xavier University) and Jose M. Arong headed Notre Dame University in Cotabato City.

Angel Alcala, who, if I remember correctly, was leaving Stanford as Joly was coming in, was president of Silliman University before he was tapped to head the Department of Environment and Natural Resources.

In any case, Joly, by getting inaugurated today becomes a university president before Francisco Bernardo, dean of the Asian Institute of Management, becomes president of that institution.

Joly has mapped out am impressive list of curricular and organizational changes that he expects to implement over the next few years. His program is full of such terms as ``modularization and ladderization'' and ``academic and curriculum consolidation.'' He also intends to strengthen the ``Moral, Social and Civic Education program through ``activity-oriented learning experience.''

Joly has a tremendous task ahead. Running a university means making the most of extremely scarce resources -- and this was a problem that Joly, as deputy minister of human settlements, never really experienced.

But Joly has one advantage that other university presidents don't have: he has time. He can stay as long as he wants -- and he is only 50 years old. He may have assumed the PWU presidency 20 years too late, but he still has a good 20 years ahead.