At the 34th Founding Anniversary celebration of the World Citi Colleges evening of that Friday the 8th of December, the WCC president was her usual beauteous self, but once at the podium delivering the keynote address, her characteristic cool, composed deportment must give way to a betrayal of some deep resentment.

The lady was mad. Her speech opened with a salvo. "About two weeks ago, I had the privilege of meeting an ambassador of European lineage. In the course of our conversation I mentioned about the bridging course offered by their university to our graduate nurses. And immediately he said he is concerned about the deterioration of the quality of education in the Philippines and he was saying a lot of unsavory things about our nursing graduates and I felt so bad that I couldn’t listen to him any longer."

She went on to deplore the fact that, indeed, the best of Filipinos are leaving to serve rich nations whose high officials get the guts to look down on them with derision. "Those praises necessarily admit to the world at large of a continuing weakness in the Philippine economy," Dr. Guico is wont to say now.

But in the first place, isn’t this what WCC had been advocating all this time, to bring Filipinos within global reach? Somebody familiar with WCC history cannot help noting that the very name of the school connotes just this global thrust.

In an article published in the Manila Bulletin a year ago, "Portrait Of A Young Man As An Educator," WCC Vice-President for Education, Ramon V. Guico III, explained that "citi" is a contraction of the word "citizen" so that by implication, graduates of WCC ultimately end up being citizens of the world.

In fact the initial name of the school was that of the old Quezon City Medical Center (QCMC) which the Guico couple Ramon and Arlyn acquired purely as a buy-and-sell venture in 1986. When the intended buyer of the property backed out of the deal due to the uncertainties brought about by the EDSA people power revolt, the couple had no choice but to run the school-hospital complex by themselves.

But that was the turn of the millennium. Ideas of globalization were flowering.

The World Trade Organization, the European Union, the single-currency concept, the strengthening and expansion of regional political and economic alliances such as ASEAN and the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), overseas employment, and the unprecedented development in information technology that effectively shattered national borders – all these surely must have worked on the minds of WCC policymakers to shatter in turn the parochial parameters of the old QCMC.

Its curriculum hitherto confined to allied health courses as nursing and midwifery was expanded to include Medical Technology, Pharmacy, Radiologic Technology, Hotel and Restaurant Management, Business Administration, Management, Entrepreneurship, Education, Psychology, Biology, Chemistry, Physical Therapy, and Criminology. Soon Medicine and Engineering will be added to this list.

The old, mainly wooden structure of QCMC was expunged for good, giving rise to a steel-and-concrete fifteen-storey edifice that aside from housing the learning institute showcased the very first hotel-hospital in the Philippines.

The stage thus set for producing graduates geared for global competitiveness, the school ventured into the ultimate transformation in form as well as in substance, the change of its name to World Citi Colleges.

RVG III, as Ramon V. Guico III is fondly called by friends and associates, explains the significance of the change. "It is our tribute to those Filipinos who by excelling in their respective fields of endeavor worldwide have ceased to be exclusive citizens of the Philippines but have been elevated to that breed of homo sapiens called citizens of the world. Then as now, these Filipinos in the mold of Rizal, the Lunas, and the Del Pilars of the Philippine struggle for independence are for us in WCC the continuing role models for our young to emulate. Hence we thought of immortalizing them in the name of our school."

By all indications, WCC has substantially succeeded in its thrust for going global. It has earned the reputation of turning out the most number of nurses for placement abroad. It has established linkages with internationally-renowned institutes and education group, such as the Association of Business Executives of England, and the Bond University, Grissith University, and the University of Southern Queensland, all in Australia. Such linkages are maintained through the Easton International Center for Management Studies which WCC runs at the AIC Tower at Ortigas Center in Pasig City. WCC is also linked with the Darwin Group of Singapore.

WCC is the first-ever local school to include in a curriculum the course of medical transcription, which not only has enabled the students to earn dollars even before they could finish the course but also, and more significantly, has been so popularized that it is now offered, too, by other schools.

Most importantly, WCC has gained headway in its two-pronged strategy to capture a chunk of the huge education market overseas: establishing branches abroad and getting foreign students enrolled in the local school. The school’s present population includes a seizable number of enrollees from Mainland China.

Still along its global thrust, WCC will be promoting the concept of hospital tourism, a very innovative idea in which patients and tourists from abroad will be drawn to the unique amenities of the World Citi Medical Center, which is ideally a venue for both cure and leisure rolled into one. A new resort-hotel-hospital complex will soon be put up by WCC for the twin purpose of accommodating hospital tourists as well as providing hands-on training for students of hotel and restaurant management and allied health courses.

So now at the 34th WCC anniversary celebration, the fighting stance of Dr. Arlyn Grace V. Guico posed a profile of paradox.

"My daughter who is in the States told me that in one of her discussions with her professor, she pointed out that OFW remittances will not actually benefit us but will eventually destroy us as a nation. First of all, the best of our people are leaving. Secondly, there is the danger of families being destroyed because of separation. Thirdly those Filipinos who are left behind will no longer strive to work. They become lazy and dependent on their relatives abroad. Think about it," said Dr. Guico with a challenge.

Yes, indeed, think about it. It’s the core of the contradiction: wanting to go global but complaining against globalization.

The riddle must be traced to where it began.