Playing with Fire

By April 9, 2006Archives, Opinion

CHEd in the hot seat

By Gonzalo Duque

AS president of the Lyceum Northwestern University, I have just caused the filing of a libel suit against officials of the Commission on Higher Education (CHEd) led by their chairman Carlito Puno for maligning the good name of our university for saying that the College of Nursing will be closed down allegedly for low performance in 2000-2004.

The other respondents are CHEd’s Assistant Director for Program and Studies Catherine Castaneda and Chairman of the Technical panel for nursing Marlo Lorenzo.

The CHEd has just made another a blatant, destructive and malicious lie, and I cannot allow this abuse to go unmasked and unpunished.

I am asking the court to award the university P25 million in damages for this crime, and at the same time I have asked the Philippine Association of Colleges and Universities (PACU) and other PACU members to wage the same course of action against the CHEd. We are at war. The CHEd asked for it. War it wants? Here we are!

Through my lawyer, Manuel Manuel and Associates, I am petitioning the Regional Court in Dagupan to nullify CHEd’s whimsical, unjust and unfair policy in giving its assessment rating to all educational institutions and schools without the benefit of a public hearing and publication as required by Republic Act 7722.

This petition is based on a recent decided case, which was CHEd’s arbitrary, unjust and despicable decision to phase out the school of accountancy of the University of Luzon. We fought CHEd on that, and we won.

In this case, the CHEd again came out with a resolution on the performance of a Higher Education Institution in the board examination with its unjustifiable increase from 0 to 3.

This was followed by another increase from 0 to 5, and then lately, from 0 to 30, yes, for nursing schools in the country.

The latter score was applied in school year 2005 as it became effective in 2006; 2006 to 2007, 2007 to 2008, 2000 to 2009, but instead of applying the rule prospectively, the CHEd applied it to 2000 -2004. The applicable rule that CHEd should have applied for 2000-2004 was the 0 to 3 rule.

The performance of LNU is much higher, which is 27 percent, and therefore should not have been included in the assessment.

We have pointed out that CHEd should not have relied too much on the low percentage score given by the Professional Regulations Commission (PRC) because those did not segregate the repeaters and the “first timers.”

By repeaters, we mean those graduates of the years l980 to l999 which CHEd imputed against the schools. It means, if a l995 graduate took the board seven times and imputed against the school seven times; moreover, the curriculum on nursing has been changed five times since the establishment of the CHEd in a colloqium sponsored by the Board of Nursing chaired by Eufemia Octaviano who admitted that the Board of Nursing has been asking the wrong questions resulting in failure of students.

Had CHEd not included the repeaters, LNU’s performance would have been rated much higher.

CHEd should not forget that LNU is a recipient of an award of distinction from CHEd itself on October 23, 2003. We were deregulated until October 26, 2008, which is recognition for the university’s meritorious performance in providing higher education and in its conduct of research, community extension services, for the high performance of graduates in the board examinations and for maintaining a tradition of integrity and excellence and untarnished reputation in educational service.

Now, how can CHEd violate itself? The fact of the matter is our university has never received any public notice concerning this latest CHEd abuse.

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