Years after the first SM mall opened, the vision of founder Henry Sy Sr. extended beyond a single establishment. The chain of malls would come later.
When SM City North EDSA opened in 1985, the vision was clear: access to products was important, but Filipinos’ access to quality education was invaluable.
Sy turned his vision into reality in 1991 through a key partnership between SM Foundation Inc. and IBM Philippines.
The collaboration led to the establishment of Asia Pacific College (APC), embodying the adage: “Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime.”=
“From the start, the vision was very clear — it was inclusivity,” said APC president Dr. Teresita Medado.
“Quality education should be available to all, and this was APC’s way of helping young people become competitive IT professionals for the industry,” she said.
The SM group underscored this commitment to inclusivity by making APC a non-profit, non-stock institution.
The 1990s saw the information technology (IT) sector booming. Countless theories and key innovators envisioned interconnectivity beyond anyone’s imagination. Encapsulating industry, integrity, and innovation as its core values, APC’s mission became to educate students for the global stage with a strong IT foundation.
APC continues its legacy of providing quality education, earning a perfect QS five-star rating in four categories: inclusivity through a wide range of scholarships; online learning via Hyflex (Hybrid-Flexible), which emphasizes empathy, equity and engagement; flexible teaching methods; and employability, with 92.8 percent of graduates securing key positions in the industry.
QS Stars is a university rating system designed to showcase the strengths of educational institutions.
The institution upholds its legacy of inclusivity, supporting 9,300 scholars: 7,000 from public schools, 1,000 from the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) and Philippine National Police (PNP) and over 1,300 from SM Foundation.
APC provides scholarship support to 80 percent of its students, with P9 million awarded in 2023 and a total of P700 million in scholarships over the past 18 years.
Starting with only 15 students, APC now has over 7,221 graduates.
Beyond SM’s scholarship program through its corporate foundation, its advocacy for promoting quality education through APC allows any accepted public-school student to pay only half the posted tuition fee.
