Monday, April 07, 2008 'Behind numbers are people's lives' By Nancy R. Cudis Sun.Star Staff Reporter
THE winner of the first awarding program that honors some of the country’s top financial education experts is a Cebuano.
Dr. Darwin Yu of Ateneo de Manila University was named the National Winner and Most Outstanding Finance Educator in the first Financial Executives Institute of the Philippines-Citi Rafael B. Buenaventura Outstanding Finance Educators last February.
At 45, he is an associate professor of the Finance and Accounting Department of the John Gokongwei School of Management.
For someone who has been teaching financial accounting, managerial accounting, financial planning and control, and advanced finance for more than 17 years, Yu sees the returns of his labor in his students when they take positions of great responsibility in various organizations.
“I would like to believe that my students are walking the extra mile because they can see how their actions can contribute toward a better future,” he said.
He challenges his students to take on “real-world problems” rather than text-based cases.
One of them wrote about his experience in a class taught by Yu: “We learned to work harder and more creatively than ever before, to push our limits and to defy the seemingly impossible...we learned firsthand about the problems that exist outside the four walls of a classroom, and about how the lessons taught to us in class could be applied to solve, or at least alleviate, these problems.”
Yu is married to Dr. Catherine Vistro, who is also accomplished in mathematics education. They have two children.
Plugged corresponded with Yu to find out more about this educator and his life’s surprises and challenges.
How long have you been teaching? What keeps you going?
My first time to teach was the semester after I graduated from college back in June 1983. I taught part-time for one semester with the Management Engineering Department under the School of Arts and Science, a unit of the Ateneo de Manila University. After that, I did not get to teach again until I returned from the United States.
In June 1991, I started teaching again, and have been teaching since then. Most of my time is spent teaching Finance Accounting and Managerial Accounting to the B.S. Management Engineering sophomores since there are usually four sections of them. Once or twice in a school year, I get to teach an elective. During the past three years, I’ve been teaching Advanced Finance.
I get my energy from teaching—it’s not just imparting knowledge, but more of seeing how much students learn over time, getting them to think critically, and watching their presentations. I get that rare privilege of teaching the same set of students over two semesters (financial accounting is the pre-requisite for managerial accounting), so I get that fulfillment of seeing how much they have grown and matured in the subject. Plus, I get to know each of them personally, so my students are more than just a face and a set of scores.
You have had several stints in the government and in the US. What made you come back to the country and teach?
My first job after college was with the Policy Coordination Staff of the National Economic and Development Authority. After two years with them, I took up my Masters in Public and Private Management at Yale School of Management at New Haven, Connecticut. Then four years with Merrill Lynch and Company in New York. It was never my intention to stay in the US.
While I was there, I kept in touch with my college classmates, especially those who were active in the Ateneo student government. My plan was to learn as much as I can while in the US, but then use what I have learned to benefit fellow Filipinos.
It was good that my fiancée then, and my wife now (Dr. Catherine P. Vistro-Yu, who teaches Mathematics and Math Education at Ateneo), shares the same dreams as I did. Both of us wanted to return home. We felt that the US would not provide the right environment for us to raise our family.
When I was looking for a job in the Philippines, I wrote several companies here, but most of them were non-committal. They wanted to interview me in person before they would hire me. I had two job offers before I left the US—one was with an accounting/consulting firm while the other was from the Management Engineering Department of the Ateneo. I decided to take the Ateneo teaching job since it would give me the flexibility to look for other jobs. I gave myself three years to explore other job opportunities.
Now, 17 years later, I’m still with Ateneo.
What do you consider as the most challenging aspect of teaching finance education?
Let’s start with financial accounting, which I teach to sophomore management students. For these students, this is their first business subject, so as I teach accounting, I also have to describe how businesses are run, and this goes down to basic transactions such as cash sales, purchases on credit, raising capital, borrowing money, paying off a loan, distributing dividends, and so forth.
The students have to understand first how these transactions work, and how they affect the financial condition of the business, before the students can appreciate the recording, the classification, and the summarization of these transactions—which is what accounting is all about.
The challenge here is to how to let students understand the business side early in their college life while most of them have no real exposure to business. I created an accounting game, which simulates many of these transactions and which shows the need for proper recording of transactions to help students understand business.
As students take on higher finance and accounting subjects, they are exposed to more sophisticated business transactions and decision-making situations. So here, we discuss bonds, stocks, warrants, options and how to value them. We examine investment decisions of firms, and the parameters used to evaluate the attractiveness of investment opportunities, especially under uncertainty. We look for ways for firms to lower their cost of capital, and why this is important.
Again, the challenge here is to describe these transactions and situations as simply as possible, and to relate them to their experiences. Otherwise, the learning is shallow, and the concepts easily forgotten.
What do you think is the state of finance education in the country today?
It is difficult to me to comment about finance education in the country in general, as I am not familiar with the conditions in other universities. One thing I am quite concerned about, however, and I mentioned this in my acceptance speech for the Most Outstanding Finance Educator award, is the need for students of finance not to get lost in the numbers, as finance tends to become quite quantitative nowadays.
Finance educators have to emphasize that behind all these financial concepts and numbers, are the lives of people. How do they improve the lives of people? What does proper accounting and accountability mean to the managers and owners of the business?
How do efficient capital markets lead to better allocation of capital in the economy? How do correct capital budgeting techniques result to better investments that produce greater social gains? Once students understand how accounting and finance are simply means to an end, they can more easily relate to the subject and think about the contributions they can make to Philippine society.
As a finance educator, what do you hope other finance educators would do to make the state of finance education in the country even better?
There is no substitute for dedication and passion. This means that finance educators have to be genuinely interested in the subjects they teach, and in the students’ learning. They have to spend the time to master the subject, in terms of further studies and research. Students can easily sense if their teachers treat their job as a form of livelihood, or as a mission. A teacher who is passionate about what he or she teaches can also create a passion for learning among the students. I have been known to be quite demanding of my students, but oftentimes, they rise to the challenge, and really put in the hard work to learn.
How did it feel being the recipient of the Rafael B. Buenaventura Most Outstanding Finance Educator? What are your plans now?
I felt honored to have been chosen. The award affirmed my decision to stay in teaching even though more lucrative jobs are available in the industry. A few years ago, some of my students asked me why I decided to stay in teaching. I said that teaching is where I see the returns on investment greatest in terms of my time. The returns will still come 10 or 15 years later when my students will have taken positions of great responsibility in their organizations. When they are there, my hope is that they will make decisions that will result to the greatest good.
I will continue to teach for many more years. Further improve my teaching techniques. Conduct research on Philippine financial and financial education issues. Find ways to institutionalize service-learning and social entrepreneurship in Ateneo.
