CHED closes 26 teacher education diploma mills

MANILA, Philippines — The Commission on Higher Education has closed 26 teacher education programs in 11 higher education institutions, as part of CHED’s continuing efforts to address non-compliant instructional courses and strengthen quality assurance in teacher education.

“We have 11 teacher education institutions that have been closed – 26 programs. We continue to do this and we are recalibrating our monitoring system,” CHED Chairperson Shirley Agrupis said during the Senate deliberations on the budget of the commission and state universities and colleges on Friday.

The Second Congressional Commission on Education (EDCOM 2) earlier raised its concern over the so-called diploma mills in teacher education, covering undergraduate and graduate programs in the country.

“There are conditional, incomplete and failed statuses. If it’s a definite failure, it’s closed. If it’s conditional, we assign them a specific developmental aspect of our mandate,” Agrupis said.

According to EDCOM 2, 177 teacher education institutions continue to operate despite recording zero passing rates in the licensure examination for teachers from 2012 to 2022.

This highlighted the gaps in the quality assurance and oversight of teacher education programs, disadvantaging students and families nationwide, it added.

EDCOM2 also found that eight of 10 graduate students do not complete their degrees within the prescribed period – two years for master’s degrees and four years for doctoral degrees.

Agrupis said CHED has begun taking action against teacher education programs found to be non-compliant, with varying interventions depending on the findings in the monitoring and quality assurance processes.

She added that the programs under conditional status are given time to address deficiencies and improve compliance.

“If it’s conditional, we will give the support for a period of time but it cannot be forever, just like the students who are given one semester to complete,” Agrupis said.

As the monitoring continues, the CHED created a technical working group to investigate cases involving teacher education programs.