THIRTY years after the establishment of the Commission on Higher Education (CHEd), bills seeking to boost investments in faculty development and quality assurance have begun moving in Congress.
Among the priority amendments of the proposed Higher Education Development and Innovation Act of 2025 is requiring higher education institutions (HEIs) to undergo quality assurance evaluations every five years.
It also proposes that CHEd provide incentives to public and private HEIs that submit to external accreditations “assessed by reputable local or international external quality assurance agencies,” according to the Senate version, Senate Bill 1427 filed by Sen. Loren Legarda.
“[M]any higher education institutions (HEIs) or teacher education providers, 77 offering Bachelor of Elementary Education, and 105 offering Bachelor of Secondary Education, continued to operate despite having zero passing rates,” said Karol Mark Yee, executive director of the Second Congressional Commission on Education (Edcom 2), during an online symposium on teacher education in June last year.
In 2024, Edcom 2 published a report revealing low passing rates in teacher education, due to misalignments in licensure tests and education courses.
Latest results from the licensure examinations for secondary teachers back in March 23 showed that despite 62.27% of takers passing the test, 6,123 of the board passers were second-timers.
The bill recommends creating a Faculty Development Fund, which will support scholarship grants and faculty training and development programs.
Legarda said the bill would transform CHEd from a “gatekeeper” into a “gardener,” shifting the commission’s focus from regulation to developing higher education institutions.
The bill “effectively shifts our Philippine higher education foundation from a focus on regulatory oversight to a more development-oriented and progressive system,” its explanatory note said.
Aside from ensuring quality among HEIs, the proposed legislation suggests giving the commission court-like status in issues related to the opening, closure, and maintenance of HEIs.
The bill also aims to give the commission more fiscal independence, especially in handling the Higher Education Development Fund (HEDF), by giving it clearer funding sources and an independent office to manage it.
A 2023 report from the educational commission showed that from 2018 to 2023, only 4% of HEDF was allocated to private HEIs, despite 86% of HEIs in the country being privately owned.
The HEDF in 2026 is set to receive P32 billion, the biggest chunk of CHEd’s budget for operations, which according to the commission, subsidizes tertiary-level scholars especially from places without state universities and colleges (SUCs).
‘Differentiated autonomy’
Senate Bill 1427 further introduces a typology-based system that classifies institutions according to their shared characteristics and program offerings. This system is set to produce “policies and resources to be tailored” to every classification the commission will create.
HEIs demonstrating “quality, accountability, and relevance” in their performance will be granted greater self-governance under the concept of differentiated autonomy, as mentioned in the bill.
As of writing, the Senate bill remains pending in committee deliberations. In the House of Representatives, Rep. Jude Acidre of the Tingog Party-list has filed a similar measure, House Bill 4958.
