The proposal of Senator Sherwin Gatchalian to integrate general education courses at the senior high school level, resulting in a three-year college education, which will supposedly help ease the financial burden on parents, has gotten mixed reactions from stakeholders.
The Three-Year College Education Act, which aims to enable the Commission on Higher Education to shorten degree programs to no more than three academic years, provides that all general education courses shall be integrated and completed at the senior high school level and seeks to ensure students’ readiness to go to college and provide them more time for internships and advanced specialization.
According to the senator, shortening college to three years will help parents with expenses, which aside from tuition, include travel fare, dormitory rent, costs for projects and field trips, among others.
The proposal makes sense, but it is based on the assumption that the only if the basic education system has already been proven to be working properly, which means fully capable of producing competent and competitive graduates, which as of this time remains a mega challenge for the Department of Education that is in the midst of a learning crisis.
According to the Coordinating Council of Private Educational Associations (COCOPEA), fixing the basic education system should be prioritized by the government before trimming undergraduate years.
COCOPEA legal counsel Joseph Noel Estrada said that there is a need to study the proposal, as the country is not ready for it. SHS graduates are not even ready for college, he asserted.
With so many supposedly well-meaning politicians and legislators seemingly wanting to be seen as the one to take action and maybe even come up with the solution to the country’s learning crisis, we now have a case of too many cooks spoiling the broth. Some want to shorten college education, others want to review K-12, perhaps with abolishing it in mind.
Whatever our public officials and policy makers decide, we hope that they give it a lot of thought before taking action, because more indecision, knee jerk reactions, or populist reactions will only do more harm than good and even set back the learning crisis further and deeper.*
