Learner Spotlight · Liceo de Cagayan University

Lowin Anacleto Balito
From working outside the campus gates to walking through them as a student, Lowin Balito’s journey is proof that no dream expires.

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Growing up in the mountains of Talakag, Bukidnon, Lowin Anacleto Balito had a dream that felt impossibly far away. He would hear the jingle drifting across the airwaves — “Liceo is fun, come on and be one, Liceo is here for everyone” — and feel it tug at something deep inside him. He wanted, more than almost anything, to be a student at Liceo de Cagayan University.

But life, as it often does, had other plans. Convinced that universities like Liceo were only for families with more money than his, Lowin enrolled elsewhere. When that path also closed, he found himself doing what many young people from the provinces do: he found work in the city. He worked at an eatery situated directly in front of the Liceo campus. Every single day, Lowin served meals to the students he quietly envied. He watched them cross the gates he could not. He wondered what the inside looked like and when he would ever get to step foot there. For years, that question had no answer.

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“Every day I saw the university and the students who dined at our eatery. My dream felt distant and uncertain.”

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Then came ETEEAP: the Expanded Tertiary Education Equivalency and Accreditation Program. Designed for working adults who never had the chance to finish a college degree, ETEEAP credits years of work experience toward a formal qualification. When Lowin discovered that Liceo de Cagayan University offered this program with quality education and affordable tuition fees, he did not hesitate. He researched the requirements, gathered his documents, reached out to the university, and applied.

On July 14, 2025 — two decades after that jingle first touched his heart — Lowin Balito walked through the gates of Liceo de Cagayan University as an officially enrolled student. He was emotional. He was teary-eyed. And he was, for the first time, a Licean.

Pursuing a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration, majoring in Human Resource Development Management, Lowin found more than a degree program. He found a mission that mirrors his own. The university’s motto — Nil Sine Numine, “Nothing Without the Divine Will” — resonated with him immediately. The story of its founders, who sacrificed and persevered to build an institution that would lift the underprivileged through education, felt like a reflection of his own story: delayed, but never extinguished.

Lowin dreams of returning one day to the Higaonon and Talaandig indigenous communities of Bukidnon and doing for them what Liceo once seemed out of reach from doing for him. He wants to be the proof that second chances are real, that geography, ethnicity, and poverty are not the final word on a person’s future.

“I want them to know,” he says, “that their dreams are valid, no matter where they come from or what ethnic group they belong to.”

Lowin’s story is not just one of personal redemption. It is an argument for what ETEEAP exists to do: to reach the people who fell through the cracks of a system not built for them, and offer them a door that was always supposed to be open.

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Is your story waiting to be written? ETEEAP recognizes your years of work and life experience as the foundation of a college degree. Find out if you qualify for ETEEAP.

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Thanks to Mr. Lowin Anacleto Balito for sharing his wonderful story.
Photo by: Lowin Anacleto Balito