K+12 and HEIs

One of the objections raised against DepEd’s K+12 plan is its supposedly disastrous effect on Higher Education Institutions (HEIs).

The argument goes this way. If two years will be added to basic education, HEIs will not have freshmen for two years, because students will be stuck in Grades 11 and 12 or Senior High School (SHS). Private HEIs will go bankrupt without two new batches of tuition-paying students.

At first glance, the argument seems correct, because First Year College right now is, in effect, Grade 11 (after Fourth Year High School, which is Grade 10). Since Grades 11 and 12 (the latter would be Second Year College in today’s system) will be taken over by DepEd, private HEIs will have no freshmen and sophomores for two years and decreased enrolment for juniors and seniors afterwards.

The problem with this argument is that it is simplistic. It assumes that all college-bound students leaving Grade 10 will go to SHS and that HEIs have no role to play in SHS.

In the K+12 plan, students leaving Grade 10 may go directly to college if they wish to. HEIs are constitutionally guaranteed academic freedom, which includes the freedom to choose who to teach. Any HEI may, at its discretion, take anyone with any kind of educational background. Of course, for the sake of argument, if an HEI takes a Grade 6 student as a freshman (I hate the more politically correct but ugly-sounding words “froshie” or “freshperson”), the student will suffer not only academically, but socially. There are, however, a number of famous cases where world-ranked universities have taken child geniuses as students. (The TV series Doogie Howser was based on such real-life cases.)

In the first two years of the implementation of SHS, in other words, there will still be some students going to HEIs. These students need not be geniuses, although HEIs would be happy with those. They could simply be students eager to go to college. This is not, however, the real reason that the fear of HEIs is exaggerated.

HEIs have a role to play in DepEd’s plan.

First of all, DepEd does not plan to build new classrooms and to hire new teachers for all the students in SHS. Instead, it plans to rely on the cooperation of HEIs, particularly State Universities and Colleges (SUCs) and Local Universities and Colleges (LUCs). These SUCs and LUCs have the classrooms that can be used by SHS students. Since there is an SUC or an LUC in every municipality or province, students do not have to travel far from their homes to attend classes. Teachers of General Education (GE) subjects in these SUCs and LUCs can be tapped to teach SHS, since many of the subjects will be the subjects currently in the GE Curriculum (GEC).

What about private HEIs, which make up the bulk of colleges and universities?

We have to distinguish between those private HEIs that offer basic education and those that do not. Those that already hold high school classes on their campuses or on extension campuses need only to reassign their GE teachers to SHS. Since it is illegal to decrease the remuneration of any employee, current GE teachers need not worry about their salaries. They just have to get rid of the idea that a college teacher has more prestige than a high school teacher. This idea of college being superior to high school is precisely the prejudice that the K+12 plan is fighting against.

The problem really lies with private HEIs that do not have a high school department. There are not very many of these purely tertiary HEIs, but since the minority still has to be protected even if the majority has been provided for, we have to face the problem. There will, indeed, be displacement of GE teachers in these purely tertiary private HEIs. That cannot be denied. That is the downside of the K+12 plan.

Many private HEIs, particularly the smaller ones, however, offer salaries lower than those of DepEd teachers. It would be to the personal advantage of GE teachers in these HEIs to move to DepEd. That is a win-win situation, because these teachers have a better grasp of content than the current teachers in DepEd.

The problem, then, is confined to the bigger purely tertiary private HEIs. This is where the Coordinating Council for Private Educational Associations (COCOPEA) gets into the picture. (To be continued)

READER RESPONSE. A reader suggests this formulation of the goals of basic education: “A reformed basic education as proposed should provide a high school graduate with adequate knowledge and skills (1) to gain meaningful employment, (2) to start a business / to be self-employed, or (3) to pursue higher education. Put this way, you affirm the value of high school education (i.e., truly foundational) for the three scenarios: getting a job, starting a business / being self-employed, or going on to college.” I love it when citizens start thinking seriously of helping rather than criticizing DepEd.

TEACHING TIP OF THE WEEK. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) recommends that teachers should talk to other teachers that teach the same subject to “share notes, ideas, and other important information.” In this age of collaborative learning, teachers should do collaborative teaching.