Philippine business school fails to renew European accreditation

(Updated 4:41 p.m.) MANILA, Philippines - Foreign students may be discouraged from enrolling in the Asian Institute of Management (AIM) after the Manila-based school failed to renew its accreditation from a European body that sets global standards for business education. An email message sent to GMA News.TV early this morning said that AIM, known for its Masters in Business Administration degree, has failed to renew its accreditation with European Quality Improvement System, a Belgium-based institution whose mission is to raise the standards of management education worldwide. AIM's graduates include Jollibee founder, chairman, and chief executive officer Tony Tan Caktiong and PLDT president and CEO Napoleon L. Nazareno. Although AIM was able to secure its Equis accreditation five years ago, it was unable to get a similar endorsement this year, a source told GMANews.TV. The source added that an Equis peer review team, composed of four deans of Equis-accredited graduate schools of business, arrived in September last year to evaluate AIM's standards. According to an AIM professor, the school's failure to secure Equis endorsement indicates that "international students may no longer come to AIM since their funders, current or future employers may require international accreditation of the school/program they attend." The school's management "must assume responsibility for such abject failure," the email message said. It added that "the management of AIM has sought to blame the AIM Faculty Association," emphasizing the ongoing conflict between the school's management and professors, some of whom were suspended for various reasons. In 2006, Professor Jose Jesus F. Roces was fired after he questioned the academic credentials of AIM's Dean, Victoria S. Licuanan, wife of former Ayala Land President Francisco Licuanan III. The National Labor Relations Commission (NLRC) has ruled early last month that Roces' dismissal was illegal. Meanwhile, two professors—Emmanuel A. Leyco and Victor Limlingan III—were suspended in July last year for demanding salary hikes for all AIM employees worth nearly a billion pesos. Citing Republic Act 6728, Leyco and Limlingan, Chairman and President respectively of the AIM Faculty Association, asserted that the school's 40-strong faculty members and 100 or so employees are entitled to receive 70 percent of the school's tuition fee increases. Besides disputing the said law and the P984 million the professors demanded, AIM management also suspended both professors for a year, citing "dysfunctional behavior." Although the NLRC later declared the penalties illegal, the two professors have yet to be allowed inside AIM's premises. Once among the top-ranked business schools in the world, AIM collects approximately $20,000 per semester, excluding board and lodging, from every student enrolled in its Masters in Business Administration program. However, bulk of the school's revenues come from short courses offered for business executives. - Robert Basilio Jr., GMANews.TV