ANGARA CALLS FOR SERIOUS ASSESSMENT
OF HIGHER EDUCATION BUDGET

Senator Edgardo J. Angara today said that the country should change the direction and thrust of its higher education in order to adapt to a changing global landscape amid the financial turbulence jolting the world's economies, including that of the Philippines.

"Our higher education must fit into this entirely different environment. Even our State Universities and Colleges (SUCs) and their thrusts will be drastically affected by this development. We need to adapt to this new environment to cope and survive," said Angara who chairs the Senate Committee on Finance.

In the FY 2010 budget hearing of the Commission on Higher Education (CHED), Angara emphasized the need for a competitive higher education and this can be achieved, he said, by adapting reforms and necessary policy changes within the Commission on Higher Education as well as SUCs.

In the 2009 national budget, CHED was given 1.7 Billion For 2010, the Senate's version of the budget for education department and the commission is 162,085.035 and 1,589.267 respectively.

Angara said that the CHED should focus its budget on four priorities: faculty development, facilities improvement, student scholarship and research, to improve RP's higher education competitiveness.

"We need to focus our resources and use the 2010 budget as a tool to enable our education sector adapt to the sweeping changes in the global environment," Angara added.

In recent global rankings, Philippine universities have ranked lower compared to universities from neighboring Asian countries. In a list of top 500 universities in the world, only two universities are from the country and their rankings have slipped in recent results.

Angara warned, "We are not competitive at all in higher education. There are some disciplines that we are able to compete but in general we are falling behind the universities in Asia."

This, he said, can be solved by implementing reforms and undertaking a serious assessment of the higher education budget.

Angara, a former chairperson of the Congressional Commission on Education, has sponsored laws that resulted in the creation of the Commission on Higher Education and the Technical Education and Skill Development Authority, both of which enabled the Department of Education to focus on its main concern - basic education.