### note: this is a response to the editorial published by Dr. Cesar A. Saloma, editor-in-chief of the Philippine Journal of Science, last December 2020
Dr. Saloma’s article only sees a small part of the dismal PhD program in Philippine HEIs. If he and the plethora of scientists like him wracking their brains out for decades on this problem would only stop, ask, and listen to those directly affected — graduate students themselves — then maybe they can realize that the problem starts with themselves and the institutions that they’ve built.
Dr. Saloma’s article isn’t wrong per se. The figures he cited does seem to line up. The problem begins when he starts to synthesize those numbers to come up with some sort of solution to the problem at hand, which in this case is the lack of STEM PhD supervisors. Well, to have a pool of PhD supervisors, you’d need to have a critical mass of tenure-track positions available in HEIs [higher education institutions] first, don’t you? How many do we have? In SUCs [state universities and colleges] that do have these positions, how many actually have academic positions with an enabling research environment? Maybe start with that? His perspective is too UP-centric [University of the Philippines], which is a problem in of itself. Too much resources are readily-available to UP constituent universities. How about other HEIs? He fails to recognize that the resources for research, e.g. grants, are in reality too wrapped up in a de facto patronage system. We need to examine how the funds are allocated, to whom it goes, and why. This is difficult to trace because somehow DOST [Department of Science and Technology], which is this country’s major research grant-giving agency, have vague line-item budgets. There are no explicit line-items for their research grants in the General Appropriations Act. So how can the public easily trace what research programs are being funded and to whom these have been given. Add in the difficult process of applying for grants, which really is a critical skill that one needs to develop for a productive research career, on top of competing against experienced proposal writers and their reputation, then one should see how much more difficult it is for someone outside of the UP system to get funding. In short, connections are ultimately what really matters. If you’re not connected to anyone within the research grant machinery, the stacks are immediately against you. The consequence is that we see projects led by UP-based principal investigators (PIs) collaborating with other scientists. While this may seem ideal, in reality it breeds a patronage system where UP-based PIs will almost always lead the research project or program, while others will be kept subordinate. Why not directly give the funds to non-UP scientists?
On to the matter of graduating PhDs, most professors in UP are completely oblivious to the conditions of their graduate students and the contradictions inherent in their own graduate school programs. This is unsurprising given their lack of willingness to listen to graduate students themselves. Have they ever asked themselves whether or not there is an enabling environment for dialogues in their departments? In my experience working in UP Diliman’s College of Science, there isn’t. What passes as “dialogues” and “consultations” are really just ways to let graduate student workers blow off steam to diffuse their energy and channel it away from forcing meaningful changes in their working conditions, a textbook union-busting technique. They need to realize that given the feudal-like relationships between professors and students — who in most cases are also their employees, which adds another layer to the power imbalance between them — it is very difficult to engage in a dialogue that will be critical of how departments handle their graduate and research programs. How can a graduate student speak up if both their future academic careers and current employment are at stake? If Dr. Saloma and other professors think that UP academia is very open to critique, especially coming from “lowly” graduate students and research assistants, they are deluding themselves. First, they need to stop infantilizing graduate students and research assistants to the point of condescension. These are fully-grown adults capable of critical thinking, if only given the opportunity. Where they need to focus their scrutiny on is towards their higher-ups, like the UP administration and funding agencies. They should punch up, and hold them accountable for putting them and their colleagues under so much pressure to deliver “products” instead of allowing them to integrate their research projects with their PhD and masters programs. They need to invest more in the process of producing scientists and allow professors to be mentors, not just producers of the project “deliverables.”
Scholarships may help, but only to a certain extent. These are still inherently exclusionary, since those who’ve had better education, and those that were able to do well academically, are likely to be accepted in these programs. This is already a very narrow segment of our society, but if you add in the many problems within these programs, delays in the stipend release is one, then only those with extra money or support can really successfully finish graduate school. Those who belong to marginalized sectors of our society will have more difficulty entering and finishing graduate school, more so if they are women who have children to support. Graduate school, and broadly the academic research enterprise, issues are very much a gender issue and it needs to be tackled in that lens.
There are many specific implementing policies that need to change as well, specifically for DOST scholarship programs. One is the ridiculous rule that there needs to be a minimum number of units that a student still has left of their program for them to be accepted in that program. If they chose to take a part-time job while taking their courses, for example, then decided they need to focus for a semester or year in doing their thesis, they won’t be able to apply, even though this is the most critical part of their graduate school life. Why can’t they get funding to support themselves while they’re focusing on their thesis? I’m sure there are more critiques and suggestions for improvements, if only we let the scholars speak in safe spaces, not threaten them by saying “[i]f you do not want our program, then you can always do away with the program.”
Dr. Saloma’s perspective is solely based on the statistics that he sees. An uptick in enrollment and graduation, coinciding with a slight increase in scholarship slots; his immediate conclusion is that there must be something good happening. Of course this is going to happen, because there are so many young people interested in STEM careers! It’s akin to opening a few job items, then after these are taken immediately, concludes that the government job creation program is working. This without asking first what kind of jobs were offered? Were those dignified jobs? Did it pay at least a living wage? Did the people who needed it most got those jobs? It’s so laughably typical of a scientist to take numbers and make conclusions out of it without proper context to actual material conditions.
What he and people like him do not, or refuse to see, is the collective experience of graduate students and STEM workers. They only see us as numbers and statistics, not as actual human beings with hopes and aspirations. He mentions that the National Institute of Geological Sciences has not produced a PhD graduate in the 21st century. True. But what he fails to ask is why? Indeed, why would someone who’s had a harrowing and traumatic experience trying to earn a masters degree in UP want to get into a PhD program afterwards? There are only a few individuals, myself included, who upon entering graduate school have decided that their end goal in graduate school is to earn a PhD degree. Many fall through the cracks, again myself included. But most of those who enroll in a masters degree program aren’t dead set on that goal. And most importantly, do the professors really want to mentor a PhD student? On top of their other academic and administrative responsibilities? During my time there, I’ve had a few professors who’ve told me that they don’t want to take in PhD students because there’s no incentive for them. It’s just too much work mentoring and setting up PhD subjects per semester and for what? The academic and administrative work that they need to do just isn’t worth it. Additionally, forcing untenured faculty to graduate PhD students is counterproductive — just look up the cobra story from colonial India — not to mention terribly unfair for them as it could expose them and their students to more internal department politics.
I only know of Dr. Saloma from his excellent reputation as a scientist, but his takes on this issue are so jarringly detached — unsurprising but still so distressingly typical as with other academic scientists — to the broader reality of the graduate school experience that I can’t help but wonder if they really want to improve the state of Philippine science and technology, because to do that would mean to dismantle the very foundations that have enabled them to build their successful academic careers. For our science and technology to progress, we must discard the old ways of doing things in the academe, which incidentally has helped advance the careers people like Dr. Saloma. They need to reexamine their motivations in their careers; do they want to teach and mentor while doing research? Do they only want to lead their own research projects? Do they want to provide service and products, and if doing so, will this lead to conflicts of interest as a professor in a university? They like to talk about statistics and propose additional requirements that could drive up the numbers, but are so thoroughly detached from the human experience and devoid of broader societal context that they almost always completely miss the mark.