After the CHED hearing, what lingers

By Herman M. Lagon

There was something quietly uneasy about the May 5 CHED hearing on the reframing of General Education. Nothing dramatic, nothing confrontational — just a kind of feeling that stayed in the background. You could pick it up in how people spoke, a bit more measured than usual, in the slight pauses, in the effort not to sound too strong or too dismissive. It did not quite feel like a formal consultation. It felt more like people trying to name a concern without overstating it.

On paper, the proposal makes sense. Streamline the curriculum. Remove overlaps. Align with global standards. It all reads clearly enough. But sitting there, listening, another question kept quietly pressing in — what might be slipping out of view as we make things more efficient?

Before the hearing, I had already written about this with some concern — mostly shaped by documents, summaries, and what I had heard from a distance. Listening to the actual exchanges during the hearing — especially the Q&A — did not completely change that concern, but it did deepen it. Some points became clearer, others more complicated. There is something different about hearing people speak from within the work itself — deans, professors, technical panel members — than simply reading policy drafts. The conversation felt less abstract and more lived.

CHED’s direction is not without merit. The concern about bloated curricula is real. Studies linked to EDCOM II have pointed out that Philippine degree programs often carry heavier unit loads than comparable programs abroad, sometimes without a clear improvement in graduate readiness (EDCOM II, 2026). Families feel this in tuition fees that stretch budgets thin. Students feel it in delayed graduations. Employers feel it, too — graduates often still need retraining before they can fully do the job. That is partly why there is a push toward outcomes-based education and alignment with Philippine Qualifications Framework Level 6. It is really a response to gaps that have been there for years.

At the same time, the Q&A revealed something that policy briefs often soften — the gap between intent and reception. When a dean from Silliman University raised the absence of a clear humanities core, it did not sound like resistance to change. It sounded like someone asking not to forget what makes education feel whole. When a philosophy professor from UST questioned whether the shift was truly student-centered or quietly market-driven, the room did not erupt — but it did pause. Those moments matter. They show that what is at stake is not simply structure, but meaning.

But reforms, even well-intentioned ones, tend to reveal their true weight not in policy documents but in what quietly disappears. In the current proposal, the reduction of GE to a minimum of 18 units is not just a numerical adjustment. It changes the texture of what students encounter in college. A course in Philippine history becomes optional or absorbed into a broader theme. Rizal, once taught as a focused study anchored in Republic Act No. 1425, risks being folded into something more general. Ethics appears everywhere, yet nowhere in depth. It is a bit like diluting a strong brew — still recognizable, but no longer quite the same.

One faculty member during the hearing put it plainly: when disciplines are merged too quickly, they lose the depth that gives them weight. That concern is not theoretical. A literature class that allows a student to wrestle with Nick Joaquin or Lualhati Bautista is not easily replaced by a generalized “global trends” module. A philosophy course that sits with difficult questions about truth and justice does not compress neatly into a three-unit overview of “ethics and data.” Content matters not only because it fills a syllabus, but because it gives students something to think with.

There is also a deeper unease that surfaced, though often carefully framed. The shift toward outcomes-based education is often presented as student-centered. Yet some educators hear something else in it — a quiet shift toward market alignment. One professor called it what many were hesitant to say directly: perhaps this is less about outcomes in learning and more about outcomes in employment. It is not an unreasonable concern. Globally, higher education has increasingly been shaped by labor market demands, sometimes at the expense of broader intellectual formation.

This tension feels especially close to home. Consider a young graduate entering the workforce, perhaps in IT or engineering. Technical skills will get them hired, yes. But the challenges they face rarely remain technical. Data privacy issues, ethical dilemmas in AI, questions of fairness — these require judgment. And judgment is not formed overnight. It grows through exposure to history, philosophy, literature, and the slow work of understanding people beyond systems.

This is where General Education has always done its quiet work. Not perfectly, not always effectively, but consistently. It gives students a language for things that do not have easy answers. It introduces them to perspectives they did not grow up with. It deepens one’s sense of kapwa and inner grounding — those small but steady ways of seeing others not just as roles, but as people. These are not competencies easily measured, but they show up when it matters.

To be fair, not all criticisms of the current GE framework are misplaced. Many students have experienced GE as a checklist rather than a journey. Some courses feel detached from real life. Some institutions load subjects more for compliance than for coherence. These are honest problems. The hearing itself, to its credit, acknowledged this. But removing or compressing these subjects may be treating the symptom rather than the cause. The issue may not be that GE exists, but how it is lived in the classroom.

Academic freedom came up more than I expected, and not in the usual legal language. One professor explained it simply — what we teach, how we teach it, and who gets to do that. That stuck with me. It made the issue feel closer to everyday work in the classroom. The boundary between setting standards and quietly influencing the whole curriculum feels thinner than it sounds. CHED’s reassurance about outcomes being the focus is important, yes, but it does not quite answer everything. Outcomes still need content to stand on.

Then there is the human side of the reform — the part that does not always make it into official slides. Fewer GE units mean fewer classes. In many institutions, that translates to uncertainty for faculty. During the hearing, the labor concern about displacement was raised not in anger, but in a kind of quiet insistence. There was a request, almost a reminder, that reform should not leave people behind. It is easy to talk about optimization; it is harder to deal with its consequences.

What stayed with me after the hearing was not a single argument, but the tone of the conversation. It was careful, at times tense, but mostly sincere. CHED representatives listened and took notes. Faculty members pushed, but often with restraint. It did not feel like a finished decision. It felt like something still being shaped, still open to refinement. That, in itself, is worth holding on to.

The conversation unfolding now is not a clash between progress and resistance. It is a search for balance. A reminder that education is not only about preparing for work, but about preparing for life in all its complexity. Reform will and should continue. But it would be wise to move with a certain care, the kind that looks not only at what can be removed, but at what must be protected.

Because sometimes, the most important parts of education are the ones that do not look urgent — until the moment they are the only things that help make sense of everything else.

Doc H fondly describes himself as a “student of and for life” who, like many others, aspires to a life-giving and why-driven world grounded in social justice and the pursuit of happiness. His views do not necessarily reflect those of the institutions he is employed by or connected with.