Kabankalan college now a state university

THE Negros State College of Agriculture in Kabankalan City in southern Negros is now a state university.

President Benigno Aquino III signed House Bill 1814 converting NSCA into a state university to be known as Central Philippines State University. It was Representative Mercedes Alvarez (6th district, Negros Occidental) who refiled the bill in Congress.

Alvarez said that other authors of the said bill are Representative Alfredo Abelardo Benitez (3rd district, Negros Occidental), the late Representative Ignacio Arroyo (5th district, Negros Occidental), Representative Neri Colmenares (Bayan Muna), and Representative Juan Edgardo Angara (Aurora).

Former senator Juan Miguel Zubiri filed a counterpart bill in the Senate before he resigned, Alvarez said.

Alvarez said the bill was originally authored by her father, Vice Governor Genaro Alvarez, when he was on his last term as sixth district congressman.

She refiled the bill when she ran and won in the 2010 elections.

Representative Alvarez also said that as committee chairmen of education, father and son Representative Sonny Angara and Senator Ed Angara also co-authored the bill.

NSCA was established as Negros Occidental National Agricultural School in 1946 and was later converted to Negros Occidental Agricultural College in 1977.

She said her father, then a congressman, sponsored its conversion to a state college in 2001.

She added that NSCA's main campus is in Kabankalan City and it was her father who initiated the establishment of extension campuses in different local government units.

Extension campuses were established Ilog, Candoni, Cauayan, Sipalay City, Hinoba-an, Moises Padilla, Hinigaran and Victorias.

Alvarez said the establishment of the extension campuses made education more accessible to students in the rural areas.

She added that today, the student population of NSCA has totaled 6,218 with more or less 200 members of the faculty.