Over the last decade, government officials and university administrators alike have obsessed over college curricula, changing syllabi to focus less on providing a holistic education and more on equipping students with skills that will make them competitive in the job market after graduation.
One such change came in 2013 when the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) released Memorandum No. 20. It proposed to trim down the national general education (GE) curriculum, arguing that the removed courses would already be taught in the K-12 Senior High School program. While the GE curriculum traditionally introduced students to the liberal arts, granting them a better understanding of subjects outside of their chosen fields, CHED’s proposed curriculum reduced the required number of GE credits from 51 (for science, engineering, and math programs) or 63 (for the humanities and social science programs) to 36 credits. Filipino and Panitikan subjects got the chop, prompting outrage from professors around the country.
Six years after CHED released the proposal, the Supreme Court ruled in its favor. In 2017, the University of the Philippines Diliman’s (UPD) reduced its general education requirements from 45 to 21 required units. It was the last of the UP campuses to implement this change, claiming that the courses would be redundant as they would already be covered in senior high. Many academics — particularly the self-formed alliance of educators Tanggol Wika — were vocal about the GE curricula change. In response, CHED’s Chairman Prospero De Vera III has argued that curriculum reform is necessary to prepare college graduates for the workforce. However, despite the reform, a 2023 Social Weather Station survey revealed that unemployment was still highest among college graduates at 25.6 percent.
I think many students have been shortchanged with the trimming down of the General Education program.
To understand what’s going on with universities trimming down their curricula, Rolling Stone Philippines tapped university professors to walk us through how the college syllabus has evolved — for better or worse.
In Defense of the Liberal Arts
When we talk about the liberal arts, we are referring to previously pre-requisite classes such as philosophy, history, and literature, among others. Such a curriculum stems from the idea that the liberal arts fosters well-rounded students, equipping them with a holistic education and important critical thinking skills. The liberal arts “significantly increases our humanity,” says Michael Muega, a Philosophy of Education and Values Education professor at UPD. For Muega, the liberal arts develop a student’s desire to take initiative in the direction of their chosen industries, their country, and their own lives.
Muega argues that the recent shift to prioritizing “professional education” — a term Muega uses to refer to skills-based courses — will hinder critical thinking. “In professional education, we don’t teach students how to examine,” says Muega. A student can learn how to fix a car through professional education, he offers as an example. “But whether you’re being treated fairly in your workplace, whether there’s a way to improve your working conditions, whether you are able to play a role in determining the direction of your future… this can only happen in a liberal [arts] education.”
Muega says that universities are trimming down curricula requirements and focusing more on skills development in order to reduce degree completion time and to prepare students to contend with a saturated global market.
“I think many students have been shortchanged with the trimming down of the General Education program,” says Muega.
Docile Students, Docile Workforce
Arao echoes Muega’s concerns. The journalism professor expands on the issue by noting that there are distressing consequences to turning away from the liberal arts.
By teaching students to focus solely on employment, Arao says, universities are creating a “docile” labor force that prioritizes “serving globalist ends.” With students looking towards an internationalized economy, he argues, it is no wonder that the government has yet to resolve the concern of “brain drain,” in which skilled workers emigrate to countries with more job opportunities.
Ironically, Muega argues that, lately, it has become even more difficult to solve the brain drain issue as universities are encouraging students to enter a globalized job market. Moreover, the problem has been exacerbated by the passing of the Transnational Higher Education Act, aiming to expand access to education by creating programs where students at local universities can complete their degrees at partner institutions abroad.
[W]e need to promote critical thinking to make sure our students are not just part of the labor force.
While these programs have granted students overseas opportunities and a global perspective, it has also resulted in the same students relocating to the countries where they completed their programs. “We don’t seem to have the mechanism to keep our students in our country,” says Muega. The liberal arts, he notes, provides a “large space for the teaching of patriotism, nationalism, and the cultivation of [cultural] values.” By reducing students’ exposure to such an education, he argues, universities are unable to foster a deeper relationship between students and their home country.
Arao similarly worries about the nature of the future work force. “What kind of students do we want to produce?” Arao asks. “What kind of graduates do we want for our country?”
The Next Chapter
Students have been tasked with the almost impossible: they must navigate a higher education system with curricula pitfalls, a hyper-globalized economy, and the ever lingering concern of what’s to come post-graduation. “Our education system is really in dire straits,” says Arao. “Our main concern is the orientation of our education system — we need to promote critical thinking to make sure our students are not just part of the labor force.”
However, some educators remain cautiously optimistic about what is to come. Smile Indias, the current chair of the Department of Fine Arts at Ateneo de Manila University, notes that solutions are plausible, albeit involving wide-scale change. Such solutions, according to Indias, include creating syllabi that promote critical thinking and encouraging students to use their university education to solve real world problems, as she does in her own classes.
“There’s still a lot of handholding,” Indias acknowledges, but she asserts that her students are slowly gaining the knowledge needed to flourish both in the workplace and in their personal lives. Other solutions, according to Indias, Muega, and Arao, include urging administrators and government officials to move away from hyperfixating on producing workers at the cost of creating critical thinkers.
The Philippine higher education system finds itself face to face with the daunting task of reinventing itself. But it is a task that can be achieved, albeit with great effort. “Take it day by day,” Indias gently advises.
