Edilberto C. de Jesus
Professor Emeritus
Asian Institute of Management
Makati City 1229 Philippines
edejesu@yahoo.com
Edilberto C. de Jesus assumed the presidency of the Asian Institute of Management (AIM),
Makati City, Philippines, in July 2009, after a year as president of the private, not-forprofit, University of the Cordilleras. Originally known as the Baguio College Foundation,
it was the first college established in the region, and about 49% of the student body came
from the cultural minority communities from this highland area.
He had first joined the AIM faculty in 1972 after completing a PhD degree in Modern
Southeast Asian History at Yale University. He previously took post-graduate courses in
East Asian History at the University of Kansas and courses in comparative literature at the
Jesuit Ateneo de Manila University, where he completed his basic education and earned his
BA Honors degree in the Humanities, cum laude.
Originally invited to hold the Don Andres Soriano Chair in Business History, he was
assigned to the Rural Development Management Program, which undertook the research
that led to the establishment of AIM’s one-year degree program focused on the
management of public and not-for-profit institutions. He was chair of the Rural
Development Management Program, when AIM seconded him to serve as Deputy Peace
Commissioner in 1987. The Peace Commission was established by President Corazon C.
Aquino to help address the issues raised by the communist insurgency and the Muslim
separatist movements in the Philippines. In 1988, President Aquino gave him Cabinet rank
to serve concurrently as Presidential Adviser on Rural Development. This was the first
Presidential Adviser appointment made by the government. Only one other such
appointment was made during the term of President Aquino. In this capacity, he served on
a number of the Cabinet Clusters, including those for Social Services, Security, the Services
and Action Program, and as Cabinet Coordinating Officer for Region 12.
Although there was an effort to develop talks with the National Democratic Front (NDF), the
main mission during the term of President Aquino was the establishment of the
Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao. The President also asked him to serve as
liaison to the non-government organizations community and to become involved in the
negotiations over the U.S. military bases in the Philippines.
He returned to AIM in 1992 to become Associate Dean for Research and to establish the AIM
Policy Forum, which he headed as its first chair. He left AIM in 1995 to head the Far
Eastern University (FEU). While president of the FEU, he served on the boards of the
Coordinating Council of Private Educational Associations and the Private Association of
Colleges and Universities, which elected him president in 2002. With two other university
presidents, he set up the University Belt Consortium in 1996 to strengthen collaboration
among the ten oldest and biggest universities in the capital city of Manila. The consortium
provided the platform for the advocacy to end the two-year compulsory military training for
male college students and its replacement by the one-year National Service Training for
both male and female college students, which could be fulfilled, at the student’s option,
through military or law enforcement or community service.
His appointment as Secretary of Education in 2002 required his resignation from FEU.
Through the remaining two years of the first Arroyo administration, he led the department
in promoting the use of the mother tongue as the medium of instruction in the first three
years of elementary education and in demonstrating the need for, and the feasibility of,
extending basic education from 10 to 12 years. President Gloria Arroyo approved the
offering of an 11th year in basic education, but at the point of implementation, decided to
make the additional year optional. The current administration of President Benigno Aquino
III has made the establishment of K12 a priority goal in education.
He served in 2003 as the president of SEAMEO (Southeast Asia Ministers of Education
Organization) and initiated the move to coordinate the work of SEAMEO and the
Association of Southeast Asian Nations, which also wanted to promote educational
objectives.
He declined to serve in the second Arroyo Administration but served from 2005 through 2007
as Secretariat Director of SEAMEO. Based in Bangkok, SEAMEO promoted collaboration
among the education ministries of the 10 ASEAN countries and oversaw the activities of 12
SEAMEO Regional Centers in eight member countries. These Centers conducted research
and training in specific areas of study, such as agriculture (Philippines), tropical medicine
(Thailand), vocational-technical training (Brunei), and information technology (Indonesia).
De Jesus was a Fellow of the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore and taught as
a Visiting Fulbright Professor at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.
He stepped down as president of AIM on 15 August 2012 but accepted an appointment as an
AIM Professor Emeritus.