MANILA -- Commission on Higher Education officer-in-charge J. Prospero de Vera III warned students and faculty members against unauthorized higher education institutions (HEIs) offering certain degree programs.
“We need to protect students and faculty members, marami pa dito nabibiktima nila ay kumukuha (many of their victims are taking) masters, teachers of Department of Education sa malalayong lugar (in far-flung areas), their tactic seems to me they award a degree to a high ranking official and they put the picture of the famous person in their materials and the poor and gullible victims think it’s legitimate and they apply,” de Vera said in a press briefing on Tuesday.
De Vera said the agency has been receiving reports about HEIs that are not authorized to offer certain programs.
“I received one report from Bicol and Iloilo and the one in Iloilo is more dangerous because they put in their website that they are CHED-accredited with five stars. Somebody was able to get a screenshot that they’re five-star accredited by CHED. The bad thing is, when media picked up the story, they’ve put down their website,” he said.
Stressing the fact that CHED does not award stars to HEIs, de Vera urged the public to check CHED's website for the list of degree programs, colleges and universities that have been evaluated and accredited by the commission.
“When we receive a report, we ask our regional offices to investigate and we issue a show cause order. We require the school to explain why it is doing it without the permission of the commission. If their explanation is not sufficient, we issue a cease and decease order to stop doing it,” he said.
Citing the closure of nursing schools in the previous years, de Vera said the agency assesses the capacity of HEIs to offer certain programs by reviewing their licensure examination results.
“There was an issue before of nursing schools and their graduates cannot find jobs, we closed a lot of them because they have to be compliant of the international standards. There were also schools which filed (cases) against us for closing their programs since 2011 which we took to the Supreme Court and we won the cases,” he said.
To date, there are 779 programs that were closed and phased out last year.
Since government agencies are instructed not to accept any credentials from students who graduated from such HEIs, de Vera urged them to check if their school is authorized to offer the degree programs they are taking.
“Affected students need to apply in legitimate universities and the universities will check the equivalency of what they took up and it’s up to the universities to decide more or less if the content is the same with the subjects they offered in existing degree programs,” he said.
On September 12, CHED said Brethren Evangelical School of Theology in Gapan, Nueva Ecija is not authorized to confer an honorary Ph.D. (doctor of philosophy) in Humanities, major in Social Work to model and actor Daniel Matsunaga.
CHED said the school has not applied for an authority to operate from the commission. (PNA)
