Name the culprits

I fully agree with the position of ALU-TUCP secretary-general Ernesto Herrera that the CHED should name the 177 nursing schools in the country that have failed to produce a single board passer the past five years.

It is not enough for the CHED to just issue a threat to close down these schools. It must make good the threat and at the same time identify the schools so they can be made to account for the lapses and shortcomings that must have led to their failure to produce board passers.

I am not sure if this failure is legally actionable. But I am sure there are many who may want to find out by filing test cases. And to help that course of action along, I feel the CHED is obligated, in the matter of public interest, to identify these schools.

Because of the so-called “nursing boom,” many schools joined the bandwagon and offered nursing courses with no other thought than to cash in on it. I would not be surprised if many of these schools are not even qualified to offer such courses.

In that light, the CHED is probably as much to blame for the fiasco as are the miserably performing nursing schools. To see to it that schools offering nursing courses are qualified to do so falls within the ambit of the CHED.

Identifying these schools is therefore the least that the CHED can do to help remedy a situation that it clearly cannot escape responsibility from. To refuse to do so is to refuse facing up to its part in the fiasco.

In fact, the culpability of CHED may be far greater than what it may be willing to admit or what the public may feel it fair to ascribe to it. That is because to wait for five years of complete failure to produce board passers smacks of unwarranted complacency on the part of CHED.

There are two nursing board examinations given each year. For one school to get zero in even one exam is already an incredible feat in incompetence and should have already raised the blip on the radar of CHED.

That it ignored the incredible fact and allowed it to happen, repeatedly, for 10 times is by itself an incredible act of tolerance on the part of CHED. Indeed, it would not be too off the mark if others would describe this as criminal negligence.

Nursing schools are not producing one or two graduates but hundreds, even thousands. Not to have even a single one of them pass the board exam simply boggles the imagination. What are they teaching their students in these schools that they would all fare so badly?

And yet these students pay good money to get an education. Because of the so-called “nursing boom,” the cost of nursing education has skyrocketed, making it one of the most expensive courses nowadays.

The course of nursing has defied the law of supply and demand. One would have thought that with so many taking up nursing courses, the cost would have plummeted. Instead it has skyrocketed, suggesting only one thing — everyone is cashing in on the phenomenon.

But the cost and the sacrifice of everyone involved would have been more than compensated if the students are given the kind of education and training that would allow them not just to graduate but to pass the all-important licensure exam.

But to have absolutely no passers, not just in one exam but in 10 in the course of five years, is absolutely incredible. The students were probably just allowed to graduate but their diplomas are worthless if they cannot practice for lack of a license.