Ateneo de Manila DISCS is a COE!
Congratulations to the Ateneo de Manila University’s Department of Information Systems and Computer Science for recently being granted Center of Excellence (COE) for Information Technology Status by the Commission on Higher Education (CHED). Here are some of the details from our department chair’s blog.
The Commission on Higher Education (CHED) named the Ateneo a Center of Excellence (COE) for Information Technology! By definition, COE status is awarded to “higher education institutions (HEIs) both public and private which have demonstrated the highest degree or level of standards along the areas of instruction, research and extension. They provide institutional leadership in all aspects of development in specific areas of discipline in the various regions by providing networking arrangements to help ensure the accelerated development of HEIs in their respective service areas.”
We used to be a Center of Development (COD), which is one rung below COE. That was because, for the longest time, CHED was not granting COE status to the field of IT. Last year, they issued a call for applications for COE status. We applied, and we got it!
This COE badge is pretty impressive for any academic department. Aside from the fact that CHED will be granting a significant amount of funding to the department, this shows the country that the Ateneo Computer Science department is one of the best in the country. I am pretty sure that there are other computer science department that have this distinction too. Overall, this shows the potential wealth of IT talent being produced by our country’s finest educational establishments.
In this time of tremendous IT outsource services growth, this is very appropriate as there is a growing demand for skilled IT workers in this country. This is not limited to technical support call center agents. This also includes software architects, programmers, systems, network and database administrators. Unfortunately, enrollments in computer science are going down. Is computer science loosing its relevance at a time when jobs are getting abundant?
