CHED exec clarifies COA report

The director of the Commission on Higher Education’s National Capital Region office said yesterday that contrary to a report by the Commission on Audit (COA), the CHED-NCR is doing its job.

CHED-NCR director Amelia Biglete said they have not been remiss in implementing program termination orders on courses offered by nine colleges and universities whose graduates performed miserably in licensure exams, as alleged by the COA.

She said the CHED-NCR allowed Jose Rizal University (JRU), Manuel L. Quezon University, Santa Isabel College, the National College of Business and the Arts-Cubao and NCBA-Fairview to still offer accounting courses because CHED executive director William Medrano gave the schools permission to do so after the schools filed an appeal against an order to phase out their accounting program.

Medrano “responded in a letter on June 6, 2005 that they were being allowed to accept first year students for the said program for school year 2005-2006, while the commission was studying the merits of their request,” Biglete said.

“The problem is until now, there’s been no action.

And that’s the reason why these schools have accepted students – because there is yet no answer to the appeal,” she added.

JRU president Vicente Fabella said he takes strong exception to The STAR’s use of the word “colorum” in a previous report to refer to the schools because it “conveys the impression these schools were illegally operating or engaged in unlawful activity.”

The term is often used to describe unlicensed or unregistered public utility vehicles.

Medrano said he sent the letter after the CHED en banc, led by then chairman Carlito Puno, resolved to desist from pursuing their program of phasing out the courses of schools whose graduates performed poorly in licensure exams.

Medrano said this decision came after a Pangasinan regional trial court issued an injunction on the phaseout of Lyceum of Northwestern Luzon’s nursing program.

Biglete said CHED did not give Trinity University of Asia a phaseout order for the school’s accounting course, as indicated by the COA.

As for the ABE International College of Business and the Arts-Legarda, Biglete said the CHED-NCR had shut down the school’s accounting program but it had persistently applied for permits to open the course again every year since 2006. The applications were always disapproved.

Biglete said AMA Computer College-San Juan has ceased operations while AMA Computer College-Fairview still offers an engineering program under strict monitoring by CHED-NCR.

She issued the clarification after the COA reported that nine schools whose engineering or accounting programs were ordered for closure effective schoolyear 2005-06 due to their graduates’ poor performance in licensure examinations “still accepted 1,194 enrollees for the first year level immediately after the schoolyear the phase-out order became effective due to inadequate monitoring of CHED-NCR.”