Wednesday, December 23, 2015

Did Mar Roxas lie about his Wharton degree?

I now have more than 6inches high of newspapers, mostly free Manila Bulletin from a ChowKing branch. I wanted to write more on national, and international affairs, but academic teaching
made me too tired to say or write two centavos worth of personal opinion.

In the past weeks, the presidential race has become entertaining as the noontime tv shows. The popular boastful candidate from Davao City, Rodrigo Duterte, claimed that mar Roxas does not have a Wharton degree, saying it was just a myth. Perhaps Duterte felt he has to respond to Mar's earlier claim that the peace and order status in davao city, which is of course verified by statistics was just a fable.

This senseless word war, with Duterte warning to slap Roxas about his Wharton degree,and the latter inviting Duterte to the Cubao's white house residence of Roxas for a slapping match, hopefully will die down and presidential hopefuls hunker down to more pressing concerns.

It is claimed by some that even the US Ambassador was confused by mar's claim of having a Wharton degree. Here is the supposedly source from [1] Wikileaks!:

Roxas earned an economics degree at the Wharton School of Business and pursued post-graduate studies at the Kennedy School of Government before working as an investment banker on Wall Street for almost a decade.

Really the cable does not picture Roxas claiming an MBA degree from Wharton but that is the interpretation of most Filipinos, including Duterte and as some people claim even of the U.S. ambassador. In other words, 'nakuryente' si Duterte.

The final word is from University of Pennsylvania itself: A graduate, whether an undergraduate or in a graduate course is an alumnus. Our readers is invited to read Rappler.com which has several articles on this discussion of Mar's Wharton economics education,
[3]Rappler 1,
[4] Rappler 2. Wikipedia's entry on Mar Roxas is in
[2].


In these critical times when the Philippines will select the president next year, it is instructive to read various opinions, whether you agree or not. We recommend />[5]


[1] Wikileaks


[2]Wikipedia entry for Mar Roxas


[3] Rappler 1


[4] Rappler 2


[5] Thinking Pinoy