REGARDLESS of his good performance, Augusto “Boboy” Syjuco, director general of theTechnical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA), does not expect to retain his post when the term of President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo ends in 2010. It would be more logical to expect him to run for a Senate seat, since his better half, Congresswoman Judy Syjuco (2nd District, Iloilo), is eligible for her third consecutive term.

On the other hand, the unpopularity of his boss, President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, might pull him down.

And so we once asked him whether he is eying a Senate seat.

“I am not sure yet,” he candidly answered. “All I want at the moment is to leave a legacy here at TESDA.”

Methinks, however, that his success at his present work could create political ripples. The hundreds of thousands of grateful TESDA-trained vocational workers who now earn dollars abroad could be his most potent vote getters.

On second thought, what more has Boboy, 65, to target? Much more than the two terms or six years that he has served as congressman, the four years that he has spent at TESDA has endeared him to the hoi polloi.

As TESDA’s sixth Director General, Syjuco wears the crown of “father of the Ladderized Education Program,” the only system of education that allows students to progress between and among technical-vocational courses, college degree programs and gainful employment.

Do you know that Boboy has come full circle in his long quest for youth empowerment? Way back in the early 1960s while pursuing a degree in Bachelor of Business Administration at the University of the East (UE), the young Boboy was at the forefront of student demonstrations demanding Malacañang for “youth empowerment.” The President at that time was the late Diosdado “Dadong” Macapagal, father of incumbent President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.

He graduated cum laude at UE.

He completed his Masters in Business Administration (MBA) at the Wharton School of Business, University of Pennsylvania, in the Unites States in 1964.

It must have been providential that the elderly Dadong and the 28-year young Boboy eventually ended up as President and Vice-President, respectively, of the 1971 Constitutional Convention. Mcapagal took Syjuco in to head his personal five-person “think-tank” on crucial Con-Con matters.

In a sense, Dadong’s daughter and protégé Boboy have taken over the “team work.”

Today, as TESDA’s Director-General, Boboy Syjuco is the prime mover of the government’s Ladderized Education Program (LEP), which aims to “rescue” victims of statistics. You see, records at the Department of Education (Dep-Ed) show that, out of every 100 students who enroll in elementary school, only 58 make it to high school. Of these 58, only 33 enroll in college but only 14 finally graduate. Those who drop out do so due to incapacity of their parents to spend for their college education.

Ladderized Education is the fulfillment of Boboy’s clamor for youth empowerment, since the system makes the Filipino dream of a college education and world-class job realistic and reachable goals for the masses of poverty-stricken Filipinos. Today, eight ladderized courses are available for the taking, namely Nursing, Engineering, Maritime, Information and Communications Technology, Tourism, Agriculture, Criminology and Technical Teacher Education.

LEP enables students to enter and exit our educational system while acquiring the competencies and skills they need to ascend and to reach higher job platforms.

Boboy has a brief but lucid explanation: “Each job platform empowers an individual to land a job and earn money to pay for a college education. Each time he re-enters the educational system, an individual brings with him previous technical-vocational learning, which can be credited as units to the College Degree Program of his choice.”

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