Cebu City dads draft ordinance for city college

Sunday, September 4, 2011

NOT wanting to be left behind by neighboring towns and cities, the Cebu City Council is finalizing the ordinance that will create the Cebu City College, which was first proposed in 2008 yet.

Establishing a community college would not need additional funding, Vice Mayor Joy Augustus Young said, since it will only offer nursing, technical and vocational courses that are already being offered by the Cebu City Medical Center (CCMC) and the Department of Manpower Placement and Development (DMDP).

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“We’ll just keep it simple. We don’t even need a campus. That’s the beauty of this project because it will be very cheap. There’s no grand design or plan to construct a big white elephant to show our achievement. We already have the CCMC College of Nursing and the courses of DMDP so we will just continue that under the Cebu City College,” Young explained.

At present, nursing classes are held at the CCMC building along N. Bacalso Ave. but its license to operate is under the Cebu Technological University.

Once the College of Nursing is under the proposed Cebu City College, Young said the City Government can claim full credit for the board topnotchers it produces every year since it will be under the name of the Cebu City Government. Also, it would be the City that will issue the diploma to the graduates.

In an interview, he said the City will not be offering other courses so as not to compete with other colleges and universities.

Besides, he said, the City’s College Scholarship Program is already in place and helps college students who want to take up courses other than those offered by CCMC and the DMDP.

“So we will just have to strengthen our scholarship program instead of offering additional courses so our college will not compete with the private colleges. Eventually, maybe we can offer courses depending on what will not be covered by the scholarship,” Young said.

Semester

For this semester alone, around 8,200 first year and second year college students availed themselves of the scholarship, which would require some P120 to P130 million in scholarship funds.

To make the technological and vocational courses available to more students, Young said the program will also be offered in public high schools in the urban barangays once the college is established.

The City Council first discussed the proposal to open a Cebu City College in 2008, when then city councilor Gerardo Carillo drafted an ordinance that seeks to make college education affordable to the City’s constituents.

The council agreed to create an ad hoc committee composed of individuals from the academe to study the ordinance, but the review was not completed in time for the change of leadership in City Hall.

Cebu City’s neighbors, including Consolacion town, Lapu-Lapu City, Mandaue City, Talisay City and Cordova have long established their community colleges.