CHED Set to Continue Reform Agenda Under Duterte Admin

The Commission on Higher Education (CHED) will continue rolling out its Higher Education Reform Agenda (HERA) under the incoming administration of President-elect Rodrigo Duterte.

“We will continue on the main things that we have been doing,” said CHED chairperson Patricia Licuanan, who will be heading the agency until 2018.

Licuanan highlighted the milestones of the HERA over the past six years which were focused on access, quality, excellence, and efficiency.

Access to higher education has expanded through the strengthening of Student Financial Assistance Programs for lower income and disadvantaged groups, she noted.

Meanwhile, several measures to upgrade the quality of higher education include enhancing the programs offered, improving qualifications of faculty through development programs, and increasing academe-industry linkages for updated labor market information.

Excellence, on the other hand, involves making higher education institutions “very competitive” and at par with international standards.

“We look around us and we see that our Asian neighbors are truly moving forward… we want to really be ahead of the pack or right there with everyone else,” said Licuanan.

“We partnered with top universities abroad in order to develop the capacity of the Philippine institutions to do cutting-edge research,” she added.

Aside from granting aids for research and development (R&D), there is also an existing program to confer higher education institutions (HEIs) with centers of excellence or development status.

Licuanan said rationalizing the public higher education system for greater efficiency is “compatible” with President-elect Duterte’s proposal of federalism.

“We try to bring regional higher education institutions together so that they will work in a more coordinated manner and raise their quality… Ostensibly, the reasons for that are so that you get out of imperial Manila and develop the regions,” said Licuanan.

She expressed confidence that the reforms on higher education will continue along the same lines, seeing that Duterte favored the K-12 program despite initial qualms about it. (PNA) BNB/FMC