Philippine Star’s sense of fairness

By Gonzalo Duque

BELOW is our letter that appeared in the Philippine Star’s Wednesday, April 26, 2006 issue. We are reprinting it to give you an idea of how and why we and the Philippine Association of Colleges and Universities dealt with the libelous and damaging articles released by the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) and/or its minions.

“May we call attention to your editorial of April l0, 2006 with the head, “Upgrading Quality.”

We presume that the Philippine Star, in coming up with the editorial, had the noblest motivation of upholding quality education in the country — to which we must hasten to say, is also our founding principle.

“It’s sad that your paper swallowed hook, line and sinker and apparently without a modicum of investigation the CHED’s published warning against medical schools whose graduates keep flunking professional licensure exams.”

We hope The Star, which has a reputation for accuracy and commitment to public service, will consider this opportunity to be a genuine effort to serve the best interest of our educational system and the country in the final analysis.

Obviously, we are all agreed on that.

Your editorial committed a very serious infraction in publishing a falsehood.  It is not true as claimed by your editorial that a regional trial court in Dagupan City issued a temporary restraining order to stop the CHED in phasing out programs of colleges and universities with a low passing percentage in licensure examinations.

That is a complete lie.  What the RTC in Dagupan issued was a decision – please note, a final decision – stopping CHED for acting the way it did and for doing in a lot of things without regards to our constitutional due process and the rule of law. Please-find enclosed copy of the Court decision for your guidance.

I could see that the editorial’s frame of mind elicited this uncalled-for lecture, thus, “In a country where TROs are anything but temporary, more families would have wasted hard-earned money to send children to substandard medical and nursing schools before this case is resolved with finality.”

Your premise was completely wrong, and therefore everything that followed has crumbled to pieces.

But as a magnanimous gesture, we welcome this opportunity to brief The STAR on CHED’s latest abuse, arbitrary, malicious, illegal and irresponsible acts. Please find enclosed a copy of our libel complaint against the CHED officials for your information. We submit that the end does not justify the means however noble it is presumed to be.

By  the way, the court’s permanent decision was made after several  hearings and pleadings arising from the complaint filed by the Philippine Association of Colleges and Universities (PACU), an organization of 142  reputable universities and colleges nationwide, which took up the cudgels for its aggrieved members,          

We have already written Rep. Cynthia A. Villar, chairperson of the Committee on Higher and Technical education, to look into the actions of CHED and the Professional Regulations Commission (PRC) for imposing resolutions of confiscatory nature that are legally null and void. ‘CHED’s Resolutions 475s. 2004 and 120s. 2005 arbitrarily set at 30 percent the minimum passing percentage that a nursing school must maintain. Before this, CHED set the minimum passing percentage at 8 percent based on Resolution no. 475-2004 on all courses.

We have also written CHED Acting Chairman Carlito Puno and PRC Chairman Leon Lucero questioning the method of grading the performance of colleges and universities offering the nursing course and other courses as not reflective of the true and current quality of education. We have protested the current method used by the Educational Statistics Task Force that over generalizes the performance ratings by averaging the passing percentage of both new graduates and old graduates.

The stand of PACU is that only the performance of the new graduates should be the true basis for determining the current quality of education of a school especially when the school is about to dose its program.  Even common sense tells us that the old graduates already represent an old   standard, which has been     invalidated by the upgrades implemented by the CHED.  To lump them together into just one group would yield a statistics that is not reflective of the current standard.

Would you believe, for instance, that even graduates as far back as 1976 who graduated with a different curriculum would be imputed against us? This would mean if a graduate took the board exam seven times, it would be imputed against the school seven times, and yet, the curriculum has been changed five times since CHED’s establishment.

In a recent colloqium. Chairperson Eufemia Octaviano of the board of nursing admitted that the Board has been asking the wrong questions resulting in failure of students. It’s clear that the nursing students have not been given what should be meticulously and correctly analyzed and phrased questions.

So, how is that for quality education, ladies and gentlemen of CHED and PRC?

It is also paramount that the CHED has disregarded pertinent rules of law and adopted policies and practices which have brought damaging and prejudicial consequences to the Higher Education Institutions.

It may interest you to know that the two universities, not colleges, based in Dagupan City were deregulated in Status for their meritorious achievements in higher education in the provision of instruction and in the conduct of research and community extension services; for high performance of graduates in licensure examinations, and for maintaining a tradition of integrity and excellence and an untarnished reputation in the education service.

We say that there is sufficient ground to initiate a full review of me policies of CHED and the accountability of its leadership for unlawful acts already enacted by the Commission. And instead of asking what’s wrongs with us, why don’t we ask what’s   wrong with CHED and PRC?

“May we strongly reiterate our appeal to The Philippine STAR, a foremost exponent of the truth and fairness, to correct this damaging and embarrassing lapse in journalism and to support us to resolve this lamentable impasse in fairness to the aggrieves parties, which continue against all odds to champion and espouse quality education in our country.” –Dr. MacArthur  M. Samson, President, APSCU Region I, Atty. Gonzalo T. Duque, Director, APSCU Region 1.

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