UNIONS OF private universities have called on the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) to adopt evidence-based policymaking in reforming the general education (GE) curriculum to uphold academic freedom and protect faculty welfare.
The Council of Teachers and Staff of Colleges and Universities of the Philippines (CoTeSCUP) said while it does not oppose curriculum modernization, the proposed GE curriculum reform should consider the students and teachers who would be directly affected by the changes.
“Higher education must evolve. Our position is simple: reform should be evidence-based, educationally sound, respectful of academic freedom, and just to the people who will implement it,” the group said during a forum organized by CHED on Wednesday, Nov. 4.
The forum served as an extended public consultation on the proposed reframing of general education and was attended by various stakeholders, including faculty unions.
On May 13, CHED deferred its proposal to reduce the minimum GE curriculum to 18 units to allow further discussions on the petitions and feedback received from academic groups.
Evidence before compression
CoTeSCUP expressed concerns on reducing GE from 36 units to 18, saying CHED must first provide evidence that senior high school consistently covers the competencies that college general education courses are expected to waive.
The group said students come from different backgrounds with varying levels of resources, facilities and course offerings, which makes GE courses a crucial mechanism for first-generation college students.
“Before we compress GE, let us first prove that the competencies being removed have genuinely been mastered,” it said.
CoTeSCUP also outlined issues on employment transition that pose precarity for faculty staff, saying that reducing GE courses could lead to fewer class sections, decreased teaching loads, non-renewal of contracts, reassignment and displacement.
“This is also why we believe DOLE (Department of Labor and Employment) must be part of the transition framework. Curriculum reform may begin as an academic policy, but once it affects teaching loads, tenure, compensation, and employment, it also becomes a labor issue,” CoTeSCUP said.
The academic unions proposed an employment protection policy for regular and permanent faculty members to ensure job security and other reasonable alternatives, such as the Higher Education Development Fund, public resources for financing retooling grants and scholarships.
According to the group, the proposed framework also asks faculty to become interdisciplinary by being digitally capable and AI-literate.
“If reform requires new competencies from faculty, then reform must also provide the means to
acquire them… Retooling should not mean telling a teacher: “You must become qualified for a new role—at your own expense,” it said.
CoTeSCUP also argued that higher education institutions should retain professional autonomy for academic competencies, saying CHED should allow them to determine the appropriate methods of instruction.
Faculty transition mechanism
The academic unions also proposed the CHED–DOLE faculty transition mechanism before the full implementation of the reframed GE curriculum.
According to CoTESCUP, the recommended mechanism should require the two agencies and other educational institutions to work together on practical transition standards covering reassignment, retooling, reduced loads, grievance mechanisms and support for institutions that lack the resources.
The group noted that a large autonomous university in Metro Manila and a small private college in a province would not handle the transition in the same way.
“Implementation should therefore be phased and, where justified, differentiated according to institutional capacity, with additional support for smaller, provincial, geographically isolated, and under-resourced institutions,” it said.
The statement was delivered by CoTeSCUP president and UST Philosophy Assoc. Prof. Rene Luis Tadle at the CHED Auditorium in Diliman, Quezon City. F—A.N. Riosa
