THE FACADE of the PLM campus
Pamantasan: Manila’s Top University
By Alfredo G. Gabot
Where Manila goes, the nation goes. For decades, Manilans took pride in this slogan because it reflected reality. Nowhere is this more evident than in the field of education.
As early as the 1960s, Manila boasted modern school buildings beginning with the administration of Mayor Arsenio Lacson. When Mayor Antonio J. Villegas succeeded him at City Hall, which he dubbed “Maharnilad,” the young mayor expanded Lacson’s program by offering free tuition in elementary and high schools and modernizing their facilities. With the support of President Diosdado Macapagal and Congress, Villegas opened on July 17, 1967, the country’s first tuition-free university, the Pamantasan ng Lungsod ng Maynila (PLM). The university rose on historic grounds in Intramuros once occupied by the Spanish fortress Cuartel del Rey and the venue of the trial and sentencing of Dr. Jose Rizal. The site had also been home to the Universidad de San Ignacio, the country’s first Royal and Pontifical University, as well as the Escuela Municipal de Manila, Ateneo Municipal de Manila, the Jesuit compound, and later the headquarters of American forces under Gen. Douglas MacArthur.
To honor its storied past and its transformation from an experiment to one of the country’s premier institutions of higher learning, PLM, led by its president Dr. Domingo Reyes Jr., celebrated its 60th year last July. The university marked the milestone with unprecedented accomplishments, including consistently topping licensure examinations in medicine, nursing, engineering, accounting, and social work. Even its earliest graduates set the tone, among them Rosalinda Taguiam Palad, PLM’s first nurse graduate and a topnotcher in the board exam. At 60, the university has produced over 150,000 graduates across its sixteen colleges and has conferred honors on distinguished leaders such as California Governor Gavin Newsom, the late Senator Dianne Feinstein, Senators Panfilo Lacson and Loren Legarda, Supreme Court Justices Jhosep Lopez and Antonio Nachura, Hawaii Governors Benjamin Cayetano and Linda Lingle, business leaders Manuel V. Pangilinan and Emilio Yap, Dr. Daisaku Ikeda of Soka Gakkai University, the late Congressman Nestor C. Ponce Jr. of the pioneer class of 1967, among many others.
With its strong academic programs and the excellent performance of its graduates, PLM has become the model for local government–supported universities nationwide. Today, there are 137 city, municipal, and provincial colleges across Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao created in the image of PLM, many of which adopted the term “Pamantasan” from the word “pantas,” meaning wise.
More significantly, fifty years after PLM’s founding, the national government institutionalized free college education through the Universal Access to Quality Tertiary Education Act, or Republic Act 10931, signed by President Rodrigo Duterte. This landmark law expanded Manila’s pioneering vision and opened the doors of higher learning to thousands more Filipino youth.
During its Diamond Jubilee celebration, PLM honored its first five pioneer batches of students, its past presidents, chairpersons, and members of the Board of Regents, the university’s highest policy and administrative body. For the first time, PLM also conferred its highest alumni honor, the Haribon Awards, in ceremonies at the Manila Hotel. The honorees included Commission on Elections Chairman George Garcia, Pulitzer Prize winner Manuel Mogato, Dr. Sybil Jade Peña of Doctors Without Borders, former Ambassador Constancio Vingno Jr., former United Nations Representative Richard Prado, journalist-author and former PLM Regent Alfredo Gabot, comedian-actor Michael V. (Beethoven Bunagan), New York lawyer Manuel Quintal, former GMA Network vice president Wilma Galvante, former RPN 9 president Roberto del Rosario, and former commissioner George Gange of the San Jose, California International Airport.
One of the highlights of the anniversary was the reinstallation and rededication of the Mayor Antonio J. Villegas Bust Monument and Mini Park, led by Dr. Reyes and Bishop Reuben Abante, president of the PLM Alumni Association. The monument and park, initiated by the PLM Scholars Foundation Inc., were built through donations from grateful alumni now based across the United States, Canada, Europe, Asia, and beyond. The original unveiling featured then Vice President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, daughter of President Macapagal who signed the university charter, along with then PLM president Dr. Benjamin Tayabas and Teresita “Baby” Villegas, daughter of Mayor Villegas. Many alumni fondly refer to the monument as the “Yeba” monument.
With Dr. Reyes at its helm and with the support of Manila Mayor Francisco “Isko Moreno” Domagoso and the City Council, the Pamantasan continues to rise guided by the values of academic excellence, integrity, and social responsibility, and the principles of Karunungan, Kaunlaran, and Kadakilaan. As it moves forward, PLM remains committed to molding the youth as Rizal’s “fair hope of the fatherland,” and to maintaining its place in the firmament of Philippine education.
