Continuing crime

Six law schools in this country, for ten years, are reported as possessing the stellar record of having had absolutely none of their graduates pass the bar examinations.None.Zero. For those who need hard facts (or you could also call it the juicy details) these schools were Eastern Samar State University; Polytechnic College of La Union; Samar College; Ramon Magsaysay Technological University in Iba, Zambales; Southern Bicol College in Masbate; and Abra Valley College.

As a result of their dismal record, the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) has said that it is closing these schools down.In the same vein, CHED has announced that another 177 nursing schools have consistently maintained their excellence at failure.Due to the explicable inability of their graduates to pass the nursing board exams, all of those schools will be forced to close their doors to the enthusiastic under-achievers flocking their way to this surest of visa opportunities.

I'm sorry. That was a cruel joke, and that was meant more as an (judgmental) annotation on the reasons why nursing is the course of eventual choice, one that will surely get me into trouble with all my friends who are nurses.But more important, that was a disservice to the parents who shelled out four years worth of tuition just so that their children, who wouldn't know squat about evaluating the quality of the institutions that they go to, could earn a useless certificate to hang on the wall.

I'm offended though that CHED had to wait for ten disastrous years before moving against these law schools.Is that the standard these law schools have to live up (down?) to, before a crackdown happens?Why wait for ten years of failure?It's not as if only a few students failed - the thing is, a perfect score of one hundred percent of their graduates had failed already just for the first year.Did they have to wait for a second, and then a third, and a tenth, before taking action?

If there's anything those graduates should have learned in law school, assuming they read just even one case a year per subject, is that there is this litigious world out there.And that lawyers can be creative in fashioning out a theory to fit the facts available to them. So, if they want to avenge being duped by conscience-less mis-educational institutions, they should sue to get back all the tuition they paid, and more.

Dangerous thought?Is it correct to blame the institution of learning if the students don't learn? Shouldn't we rather blame the individual for failing an exam? After all, he's the only one taking the test, right?Also, a school can never guarantee test results.So is it fair, or even wise, to put the blame on the school?

Yes, these are valid questions.But with statistics like these in hand (not a single bar passer for a decade!), I would say absolutely yes, the schools should be blamed and made to pay for it, and the case for those students would be easy to make.

 Just like any other contract, while the student has the obligation to pay tuition fees and all those extra charges masquerading as miscellaneous fees, the school has its own end of the bargain to uphold.It has to deliver what the students are expecting: education.

 An educational institution has to have accountability.It has the responsibility of keeping track of its academic performance, of recruiting great faculty members, of making sure that students are given the right tools to make it in the big bad bar exams.What the students do with those tools, is another matter, but at least, the school should equip them so they're in a position to perform.

To keep milking money from these students, (and to keep giving them passing grades when they probably shouldn't have passed) is, if not exactly criminal, then quasi-delictual.(In legal circles, that means a green light to sue.)

Now that CHED is taking action against these schools, what next? What about those schools where 75% of its graduates failing the bar for the past ten years?Or what about schools with 95% of its graduates failing the bar for just even a single year?CHED should get going on these.

After all, even negligence can be criminal.