Iconic schools now the new trophies of the top 1%

Escolar University – an acquisition from is in Mendiola, near San Beda. The other campuses, just as big, are in Malolos, Bulacan and Makati City.

The unsettled debt of the Benitez family to the Tanco family has enabled the port facility operator to gain control of the Philippine Women’s University, including the JASMS compound along EDSA. A legal the status of the case. But it looks like Mr. Tanco, who also owns STI, the technology school, has the upper hand.

The Del Rosario family has acquired a major university in Central Luzon, Cabanatuan City’s Araullo University and some colleges in Southern Philippines.

This week’s news is another heartbreaker for the independent families still holding the fort. The Ylagan family, owners of the National Teachers College, which has had a long rivalry with the state-owned Philippine Normal University on the training of quality teachers, has given up. They sold the school to the Ayala Group, another handover of an iconic school to a member of the Top 1 percent.

Will the owners of the Far Eastern University/FEATI and the Lyceum of the Philip- pines follow suit or defy the trend? If they do sell, every iconic tertiary institution in Metro Manila, except those run and administered by the government and the religious orders, will be tycoon-owned.

And that is hardly the best arrangement for higher institutions of learning.

Of course, the religious orders won’t sell their schools and the state-owned colleges and universities will always get funding. Still, tycoon-owned colleges and universities are automatically stripped of the aura and romanticism and cachet of the traditional universities. Just look at the scam called Trump University, now defunct.