AFTER being a major source of Filipinos’ education and lifelong requirements, National Book Store (NBS) on March 20 this year launched its education unit called NBS College.
Located on the third and fourth floors of NBS building on Quezon Avenue corner Scout Borromeo and Panay Avenue, the college will offer in school year 2018-2019 six in demand degree programs: BS Accountancy, BS Accounting Information System, BS Entrepreneurship, BS Computer Science, BS Library and Information Science and BS Tourism Management.
“Guided by National Book Stores’ 75 years of entrepreneurial excellence, NBS College equips our students with the skills and values they need to succeed in the rapidly changing global landscape,” said Adrian Ramos, NBS College president and a grandson of its founder Socorro Ramos in his speech during the inauguration of NBS College.
“Generation after generation, we have seen families do whatever it takes to give their children a proper education because a diploma for many Filipinos is more than just a piece of paper; it is their hope for a better life. My Lola Socorro Ramos’s biggest frustration in life was that she was not able to afford a college education. Because of this, she made it her life’s mission to help as many Filipino students as possible to achieve the education she herself could not receive,” Ramos added.
Despite his grandmother’s success in building NBS into a major household brand in the country, Ramos said his grandmother believes a college education can help anyone get a good start in life. He said it is fitting that National Book Store is now formally entering the education sector by creating an institution where modern education strategies will converge with the intuition and values his grandmother has displayed all her life.
NBS College has formed a team of teaching professionals with significant track records in academe. The NBS College team is composed of Dr. Lydia Echauz, vice chairman; Dr. Cecilia Anido, vice president for academic affairs; June Sebastian, vice president for administration and academic services; Deborah Acosta-Cajustin, vice president for finance and legal affairs; and Lakan-Asa Bautista, college dean.
Ramos said Mercato Centrale and the Mercato Academy, represented by Rene Ledesma Jr., agreed to become their industry partner for Entrepreneurship and to help provide the industry-standard training for the students in the program. “We’re looking forward to our other partners in the coming months. Some of our faculty will team-teach with representatives from our partner companies, such as Mercato, to bring to life this vision of experience-based learning that prepares our students for the real world.”
Ramos said NBS College will offer programs that reflect the entrepreneurial heritage of National Book Store, as well as the demands of business and industry today. Accountants and information specialists are in high demand, while the tourism and technology industries are expected to be the economic drivers of the country.
He said NBS College’s modern facilities and highly competent faculty help create an environment of collaborative learning. In line with NBS’s values of service, nurturance and benevolence, NBS College also offers academic scholarships and a special scholarship grant for its pioneer batch.
Ramos said NBS College is also offering scholarship grants of P12,500 per student. He said these grants are available to everyone in the pioneer batch and will be given to them each of the four years they will be in NBS College.
Students in the pioneer batch can expect their tuition will remain the same for all four years. Apart from the scholarship grant program, NBS College is giving merit-based scholar-ship grants to top graduating students from senior high schools, while the National Book Store Foundation has made an initial commitment of 10 need-based scholarship grants for the pioneer batch.