THE Commission on Higher Education (CHEd) is asking the Department of Budget and Management to restore the P12 billion removed from its proposed budget in 2017.
This was urged by the CHED as they expressed dismay over the decision of the House of Representatives to reduce their 2017 proposed budget of P13.37 billion by P2 billion intended for the commission’s Philippine-California Advanced Research Institutes (PCARI) Project and its K to 12 Transition Program.
For the PCARI Project, a continuing program since 2013, the proposed 2017 budget of P1.763 billion was intended to support 131 PCARI postdoctoral scholars. The CHEd had expected to double the allotment of the scholars next year for advanced degrees in science and engineering. It will also fund 35 new PCARI research and development (R&D) proposals. Congress removed P1 billion each from PCARI and the K to 12 Transition Program.
“PCARI seeks to address the low research and innovation productivity of the Philippines in comparison with neighboring countries, based on the World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Index. It was conceived by the science and academic community and approved by Congress in 2013 as a leap-frogging strategy to build the country’s capacity for research that translates to technological innovations, strategic policies and concrete solutions to address development problems in the country,” CHEd Chairman Patricia Licuanan said in a statement.
The PCARI R&D projects involve 15 Philippine higher education institutions (HEIs) with collaborators in the University of California. These projects address vital societal-scale problems and seek to develop capacity by supporting scholars who work on topics related to the research projects. All scholars are expected to study full time or part time in the University of California.
The CHEd noted the current PCARI R&D portfolio includes the extension of cell-phone sites for remote areas using the technology in a village base station; design hardware and software to manage the collection and analysis of big data gathered through the deployment of sensors in the power grid, water system and the environment; design an algorithm for managing traffic in urban areas; develop affordable and efficient printable solar collectors and power-storage systems that could be deployed in rural areas; create an early-warning system for plant diseases affecting our banana plantations; design precise water-management systems for agriculture; invent accurate diagnostic kits for dengue that could be used by rural health workers; discover new antimalarial drugs; and enhance local capacity to design and assemble medical devices.
The K to 12 Transition Program was designed to mitigate the effects of the implementation of K to 12 on the higher education sector from 2016 to 2021, and to provide a safety net for faculty, staff and higher education institutions affected by low student enrollment, as students will be in Grades 11 and 12 instead of college. In the first semester of academic year 2016-2017 alone, more than 4,000 faculty and staff received grants from the CHEd, with an additional 3,000 grantees targeted for the second semester. This allowed rthe CHEd to successfully minimize displacement of HEI personnel to just 3,286, compared to the estimated 9,000 for 2016 alone,” Licuanan said.
The budget for 2017 is even more critical as two full batches of students—supposedly college freshmen and sophomores, respectively—would be enrolled instead in senior-high school in June 2017.
Continued support is needed to provide cushion to HEIs and encourage them to place their affected faculty and staff in graduate studies, continuing professional education, or research activities instead of retrenchment. Without sufficient funds, displacement numbers will increase drastically in 2017, with a P1-billion cut equivalent to a decrease in the coverage of about 2,463 faculty and staff.
The CHEd underscores the opportunity to invest in strategic reforms during this transition period to upgrade the Philippine higher-education sector, and for it to become more competitive regionally. In Malaysia 70 percent of their faculty already has graduate degrees, while in Vietnam, the figure is at 62 percent, paralleled with generous scholarships abroad. Meanwhile, only 50 percent of Philippine faculty has graduate degrees, oftentimes in disciplines not aligned to what they are teaching.
Through the K to 12 Transition Program, the CHEd aims to increase this share to 70 percent in the next five years, with accompanying efforts to improve institutional capacities.
Finally, Licuanan said it is important to stress the reduction in the budget of both projects run counter to President Duterte’s 10-point agenda that puts primacy on investments in human-capital development—which begins with faculty who are well-trained in their fields, as well as the promotion of science and technology to enhance innovation and creative capacity.
“The commission, therefore, strongly urges Congress to restore the P2-billion budget, and allow the CHEd to fulfill its role of working toward a locally responsive and globally competitive Philippine higher-education system,” she said.