Role of Pre-University Program in the Integration of Cultural Minorities in Mindanao State University

The Mindanao State University was established as one of the government?s responses to the Mindanao Problem involving the peaceful coexistence of the Tri-people, the Muslims, Lumads and Christian settlers. Part of the mission of Mindanao State University is to attain peace and sustainable development in the MINSUPALA (Mindanao-Sulu-Palawan) region and facilitating the integration of the Tri-people into the national community. In line with this, the Pre-University Program (PUP) was implemented in MSU, GSC since 1996. Based on the assumption that many of the minority students are far behind the majority in terms of their preparation for collegiate programs, the PUP was created to bridge the gap between the two groups. The PUP provides the participants with the opportunity to be mentally, socially and emotionally equipped from one semester intensive training in the basic tool subjects such as English, Mathematics and Values Education, before moving to the regular degree programs of the University. This research aims to determine the extent to which the MSU Pre-University Program fulfills its mandate as an instrument of integration among the Tri-people in Mindanao. Furthermore, the researcher would like to unfold what characterize the essential experiences of integration of a PUP participant. The theoretical framework used in this study is Tinto?s Model of Student Retention. The result of this research shows that the average survival rate of students from PUP to the completion of their respective courses is 19 %. The survival rate of PUP students is considerably low when compared to the rate of student withdrawal or attrition rate. The low survival rate can still be seen as an indicator of success (however small it may appear), since these PUP survivors were able to achieve the milestones of experiences that enabled them to integrate into the MSU Educational System. The experiences of the graduates who were former PUP students speak of successful integration and fruitful outcome. The impact of these of graduates upon their family, community and the Filipino society continues to grow and multiply with a ripple effect statistics cannot measure.