The problem isn’t what teachers study; it’s the system that limits their choices
The Teacher Education Council’s (TEC) recent statement, “Graduate School Must Refocus on the Classroom,” presents an important yet incomplete picture of graduate teacher education in the Philippines.
Drawing from DepEd’s teacher deployment and qualification records, TEC notes that most teachers who pursue master’s and doctorate degrees choose Educational Management programs, while far fewer specialize in Mathematics, Science, or English.
The message is clear: Teacher Education Institution (TEI) graduate schools and teachers themselves, must shift toward subject-based expertise.
This view sounds reasonable, especially amid the country’s chronic learning crisis. However, it overlooks a deeper systemic reality that shapes teachers’ choices.
Currently, at least among teachers, graduate education decisions are influenced by affordability, accessibility, professional incentives and structural inequities that raw statistics cannot capture. TEC’s conclusion may be numerically accurate, but it is contextually incomplete.
Many teachers indeed choose Educational Leadership and Management programs. Graduate education in the Philippines is largely a personal and often self-funded investment.
Without strong scholarship programs or sustained institutional support from TEC, CHED, or DepEd for subject-specific degrees, teachers naturally gravitate toward programs that are practical and attainable.
Educational Management programs are widely available, offered in flexible formats and usually impose a lower financial and academic burden. They also align more closely with DepEd’s promotion pathways, where administrative credentials often carry more weight than disciplinary expertise.
In contrast, subject-based programs, particularly in Science and Mathematics, are fewer, more demanding and concentrated in research universities that charge higher tuition fees.
Without targeted scholarships or clear professional incentives, teachers’ program choices reflect pragmatism rather than a lack of commitment to content mastery.
If the state wants more subject experts, it must create conditions that make those pathways viable through financial support, and clearer, more viable prospects of career progression.
Another concern is the way TEC appears to take the data at face value. Although it is commendable that the Council relies on DepEd data, numbers in education must be read critically.
School Form 7 or School Personnel Assignment List offers headcounts but does not illuminate the quality of programs, the realities teachers face, or the institutional conditions that shape graduate school decisions.
This point matters because the proliferation of low-quality teacher education institutions is part of the underlying problem. The abundance of mediocre Educational Management programs has distorted the meaning of graduate education.
Many of these institutions offer quick, inexpensive degrees that attract teachers seeking credentials required for promotion, not scholarly or pedagogical growth. These programs inflate statistics and create the impression that teachers prefer leadership degrees, when many are simply responding to what the system makes accessible.
Following the data without interrogating it is risky. Not all data points represent genuine preferences. Many represent constrained choices.
Before drawing recommendations, TEC must examine where these degrees come from, whether institutions meet appropriate standards and what kinds of learning outcomes they produce. The real issue is not the number of Educational Management graduates. It is the uneven quality and purpose of many programs.
For this reason, imposing a moratorium on leadership and management programs is not the solution. That approach would be simplistic and unfair. Schools need capable leaders who can support teaching and drive organizational improvement.
TEC’s emphasis should be less on pausing leadership programs and more on ensuring that all graduate offerings—disciplinary or managerial—consistently uphold rigorous academic and professional standards.
Strengthening accreditation processes, requiring qualified faculty, and enforcing research-based curricula are essential steps toward restoring integrity in graduate education.
Globally, graduate education, whether in teacher education or any other field, is fundamentally anchored in research. Master’s and doctoral programs exist to cultivate inquiry, deepen disciplinary understanding and generate knowledge that informs practice and policy.
The core problem in the Philippines is that many graduate programs, across both leadership and disciplinary tracks, fall short of this international expectation of research rigor. Refocusing graduate education therefore, requires strengthening research culture, improving faculty expertise and aligning program standards with the scholarly demands of advanced study.
Alongside regulation, TEC should create scholarship programs that support teachers pursuing advanced studies in critical content areas.
A balanced national scholarship portfolio could offer diverse pathways: disciplinary specialization, leadership development, and other tracks for teacher educators, curriculum designers and researchers whose work extends beyond classroom teaching.
This would give teachers meaningful choices based on interests and school needs rather than financial limitations or promotion pressures. DepEd’s reward structure must also be revised so that content mastery and research competence are recognized as much as administrative credentials.
The call for graduate schools to “refocus on the classroom” reflects a real concern but risks promoting a one-dimensional response. Teachers’ professional development is not a competition between leadership and subject expertise. Both areas are necessary and both can contribute to better learning.
The deeper issue is that the system values collecting credentials more than developing competence, and prioritizes compliance over building real capacity. Addressing this imbalance requires broad systemic reform, not a narrow redirection of teachers’ program choices.
Graduate education has the potential to be a powerful driver of improved educational quality when properly supported and regulated. However, when left to market forces and unchecked institutional proliferation, it leads to credential inflation and public distrust.
TEC’s data should prompt reflection, not simplification. Teachers are not studying the wrong things. They are studying what the system makes most accessible, affordable and professionally rewarded.
A more constructive response from TEC involves creating opportunities rather than imposing restrictions. This means supporting teachers who want to deepen disciplinary expertise while also improving leadership and management programs that meet high standards.
It means regulating institutions that offer substandard programs and designing policy incentives that value substantive competence, whether in subject mastery or educational leadership, rather than simple title accumulation.
If TEC wants graduate education to genuinely refocus on classroom needs, it must begin by addressing the system that shapes how teachers learn, choose and grow.
The problem is not that teachers take too many leadership courses. The problem is that the structure of graduate education in the Philippines has made those the most accessible, affordable and rewarded options.
And at a time when many of the sector’s challenges require systemic transformation, it is ironic that TEC appears intent on narrowing the very pathways that develop leaders capable of changing the system. Until that changes, the numbers will continue to reflect constrained choices rather than indifference to content expertise.
Levi E. Elipane ([email protected]) is a professor and deputy dean of the College of Advanced Studies (CAS). Ma. Arsenia C. Gomez ([email protected]) is an associate professor at the Faculty of Behavioral and Social Sciences and director of the Research Management Office. Arlyne C. Marasigan ([email protected]) and Allen A. Espinosa ([email protected]) are professors of CAS and fellows of the Educational Policy Research and Development Office. The views expressed here are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official position of the Philippine Normal University.
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