Is CHED hopeless?

I have been with the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) from its birth, first as head of the Literature Committee of the Technical Panel on Humanities, Social Sciences and Communication (HUSOCOMM), then as head of the HUSOCOMM itself, until I turned over the position to former CHED Chair Fr. Rolando de la Rosa, O.P.

In addition, I have served CHED in various capacities, such as head or member of the University Assessment Team that recommends the granting of university status to institutions, member of the Regional Evaluation Team recommending autonomous status for universities, and (until now) coordinator of the HUSOCOMM Quality Assessment Teams of the National Capital Region, which recommends if schools can open new programs.

This is why it breaks my heart to see what is happening now to CHED.

The first sets of Commissioners were scholars of unquestioned accomplishment. The previous Chairs of the Commission were internationally-renowned scholars, such as Angel Alcala (whose name rings a bell anywhere in the world of marine scientists), Esther Albano-Garcia (award-winning chemist), and Fr. De la Rosa himself (award-winning historian).

Now heading CHED is someone who does not even have a doctorate and, therefore, has not even achieved the minimum standard of a university professor. In the academic world, he is considered merely a graduate student. One Commissioner, according to people who know her, has not even been in education for ten years, the minimum number of years required by law for the position.

It would not have been so bad if these two individuals would quietly melt into the woodwork and not say a word until their temporary tenures expire, hoping that no one would notice that they are intellectually unqualified to be leading the country’s higher education institutions. Unfortunately, contrary to all good sense, they seem bent on destroying the whole fabric of higher education in the country.

That is the impression I get from all the letters (some signed, some unsigned), full of accusations, flying back and forth within and outside CHED. Poison pen letters are now the rule, rather than the exception, in the Commission that I love. What was a cohesive group of academics eager to push the frontiers of knowledge, to challenge received wisdom, to harness the creative energies of our best minds, to ensure that academic freedom is used not to defend but to stimulate intellectuals to think of new ways of helping humanity is now just a cesspool of individual Commissioners out to save their own skins.

No one foresaw the depths to which CHED would sink. It used to be the hope of those in tertiary education. Now, it seems to be a hopeless mess.

There are allegations that those breaking the law are bent on removing those following the law. The Career Executive Service law and the CHED law are ignored. Scams are uncovered either by people in CHED itself or by the media.

Meanwhile, substandard schools continue to con parents out of their hard-earned money, students continue to worry about tuition fees rather than their lessons, teachers still teach as though the electronic revolution never happened, and scholars are ignored by the rest of the world.

If we need any objective proof that our higher education system is in disarray, look at how even UP and Ateneo barely made it to the list of the world’s best institutions. If we were really so bright, how come nobody else knows it?

I long for the days when I would go into a CHED meeting, knowing fully well that, as a volunteer, I would not get paid, and meet dozens of other people, all of them well-known in their fields, also willing to work for nothing, just to make our universities world-class.

By the way, one Commissioner wrote a reply to my earlier column on this topic. The reply completely missed the point of my column and proved that the Commissioner cannot even read English.

“WORDS OF THE DAY” (English/Filipino) for next week’s elementary school classes: Jan. 21 Monday: 1. walk/estatwa, 2. this/exhibit, 3. warm/ermitanyo, 4. other/erupsiyon, 5. reason/ekonomiya, 6. observation/engineer; Jan. 22 Tuesday: 1. wall/eraser, 2. that/estribo, 3. waste/ espada, 4. over/ enrolment, 5. receipt/ espesyal, 6. offer/ehekutibo; Jan. 23 Wednesday: 1. star/example, 2. tongue/espiya, 3. way/epekto, 4. silver/emosyon, 5. power/elect, 6. political/embroidery; Jan. 24 Thursday: 1. talk/fugab, 2. tooth/fuyu, 3. weight/fugu, 4. person/frame, 5. prison/frill, 6. detain/fuse; Jan. 25 Friday: 1. true/fresh, 2. touch/futan, 3. cork/fry, 4. reward/fountain pen, 5. office/freak, 6. responsible/fungus. The numbers after the dates indicate grade level. The dates refer to the official calendar for public elementary schools. For definitions of the words in Filipino, consult UP Diksiyonaryong Filipino.