Sustainable value creation in the Philippine higher agriculture education sector

The study seeks to operationalize the sustainability framework proposed by Hart and Milstein (2003) within the context of Philippine higher education in general; and higher agriculture education in particular. Managing cots and reducing risk is one of four performance outcomes. In a 1998 education sector study on the Philippines that was conducted by the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank, priorities for action were identified towards reforming higher education in the country. Clearly, the education sector reforms that need to be carried out in Philippine higher education are aligned with ballooning public debt justifies immediate action. Moreover, although only about 20% of the higher education institutions are state-operated, a bulk of the enrollees in these institutions is in agriculture and fishery. Johnson (2000) observed that a large proportion of graduates do not enter professions filed in which they have been trained. Among the four sets of drivers that are related to sustainability, this preliminary study showed that emerging technologies significantly influenced all the performance dimensions of higher agricultural educational institutions. This particular driver is a capital-intensive input that is associated with emerging and modern agricultural technologies used in commercial farms and agro-industries. Together with two other sustainability drivers (e.g., challenges of civil society members and the growing population), emerging technologies were found to be significantly influencing the performance dimension of acquiring and developing capabilities. This causal relationship was observed for both higher agriculture educational institutions, and higher educational institutions in general. Respondents felt that educational institutions need to work harder to innovatively address an unserved market—the higher education needs of the poor. They represent the fastest growing segment of the population in the country