Velasco said that the most important issue in the university as discussed in the recent UP Faculty Conference is how to maintain the quality of education in UP. He asked that considering the exponential growth of information in society where what was learned may become obsolete and irrelevant in a few years, are students prepared by the time they leave the university?

He emphasized that in a university that values and respects academic freedom, and where teachers are given the freedom to teach students what they want and how they would do it, he hoped that the new teachers will value this freedom and the responsibility that goes with it and will always put in mind the future of their students.

The chancellor also encouraged them to be creative in handling their courses and realize that there are resource limitations in running the university. He said that he is committed to and is promoting the large class approach in order to meet the demand for bottleneck RGEP courses.

The greatest challenge, Velasco said, is how to accommodate more students since the university gets only 2000 students every year with another 1000 in the waitlist. "If we want to spread the UP education, if we are to produce more Filipinos with a UP education, we need to absorb more students," he said.

Chancellor Velasco also told them that while a career in a university setting can be an exciting one, to make money in UP is difficult. He alluded to this as the principal reason other faculty members, after getting experience and earning a graduate degree on reduced fee, would transfer to other universities that offer higher compensation.

He, however, explained that if the comparison is based on salary rate of UPLB teachers and workload credit, UPLB is not really far away from what other universities give their teachers. In UP, teachers are given a normal workload of 12 units and this is reduced when the teacher is enrolled for a graduate degree while in other universities that offer a higher compensation the workload is doubled that the teachers do not have the time to pursue an advanced degree. "So, in terms of compensation and actual teaching load, the rate may not be far from each other and teaching here, you get the benefit of academic freedom which they don't get in private universities," Velasco emphasized.

He also informed the new teachers that the Salary Standardization Law III will hopefully be passed. This will double the salary of government workers over a three year period. He added that the university also looks for ways to help teachers financially. This year, the BOR approved 100 slots for a professorial chair with a grant package of P100,000 each for a senior faculty and 100 slots for a faculty grant to junior faculty members worth P50,000 each. (AP Dominguita)