September 21, 2015, 9:15p.m. – THE UNIVERSITY is eyeing at least 5,000 students to enroll in UST Senior High School (SHS), which is set to open in 2016 in response to the government’s “K to 12” educational reforms.
The enrollment target was bared as the University
administration finally released the stringent guidelines for the transfer of
college faculty to senior high school next year due to the expected drastic
decline in college freshman enrollment.
“[T]he number of faculty members who will be needed in the
SHS is contingent upon the number of enrollees… so that a substantial number
of teaching loads can be distributed to the faculty members,” UST-SHS Principal
Pilar Romero said in a letter to Vice Rector for Academic Affairs Clarita
Carillo dated Aug. 28.
The UST-SHS requires faculty members to have master’s
degrees. A professional teacher’s license is not required but is an
“advantage,” Romero said.
Faculty members will also be required to attend all
“retooling seminars” to be conducted during the long holiday break in January,
she added.
In addition to holding classes from Monday to Saturday,
senior high school faculty members must “allot consultation hours and
opportunity classes for students who may need special assistance in coping with
the academic requirements of the subjects they are handling.”
Romero said the compensation of faculty members would be
based on guidelines to be issued by a government consultative council composed
of the Department of Labor and Employment, Commission on Higher Education,
Technical Education and Skills Development Authority and the Department of
Education.
College faculty are set to be displaced by the K to 12
reforms, with the transition period reducing college teaching loads beginning
next school year. High school students will spend two more years in senior high
school or Grades 11 and 12, instead of graduating to college.
Because of the small number of enrollees, UST will offer
only 13 programs to freshmen enrollees next year.
The Varsitarian previously
reported that college professors, aside from teaching in senior high school,
will also have the option of doing office work, taking research loads and going
in sabbatical or study leaves.
K to 12 critics warn that an estimated 85,000 higher
education institution employees are at risk of losing their jobs or suffering
pay cuts once the program goes in full swing. Jerome P. Villanueva
