‘New CHED chair must lift ban on nursing programs’

MANILA, Philippines — A senior member of the House of Representatives has called on president-elect Ferdinand Marcos Jr. to appoint a replacement of Commission on Higher Education (CHED) Chairman Prospero de Vera III who will be amenable to new nursing programs.

Cavite Rep. Elpidio Barzaga Jr. said Marcos should appoint someone who has “a firm grasp of the real situation on the ground,” which he claims De Vera “sorely lacks,” citing the CHED’s refusal to lift the 11-year-old ban on nursing programs.

Barzaga is displeased that this stand by the CHED under De Vera has been detrimental to the newly established Kolehiyo ng Lungsod ng Dasmariñas, which has not been allowed to open its nursing program in his city.

He said the CHED has been doing the country a “great disservice by continuing to ban new nursing programs, especially since the students of Kolehiyo ng Lungsod ng Dasmariñas do not pay any fee.”

The chairman of the House committee on natural resources scored De Vera for stonewalling on his year-old request to lift the ban to benefit students attending the city college and help expand the country’s health care workforce in the face of the ongoing COVID-19.

“We cannot surrender the future of the country’s nursing workforce to the whims and caprices of some individuals,” he said.

“It’s high time that CHED lifted the ban on nursing programs. We’re still in a pandemic and we’ve seen how badly we need more nurses and health workers as we continue to battle COVID-19. The CHED’s stubbornness is hurting the country; this is unthinkable,” he added.

By virtue of a memorandum order issued in September 2010, the commission stopped the opening of all new undergraduate and graduate programs in business administration, nursing, teacher education, hotel and restaurant management and information technology education.

The moratorium, issued on the ground that the proliferation of the programs would cause “the deterioration of the quality of graduates of these five higher education programs,” was already in place when President Duterte appointed De Vera to head the CHED in October 2018.

In January 2021, Barzaga wrote to De Vera, asking to lift the ban on nursing programs and warning that “the present acute and dramatic escalation of shortage of nurses may worsen in the future both at a national and global level.” – Mayen Jaymalin