CHED and the balance we might lose

By Herman M. Lagon

The May 5 CHED online hearing comes with a quiet kind of unease. Not loud, not dramatic—just there, in faculty rooms and in passing thoughts. The idea of cutting or reshaping General Education may look like a simple fix, but it feels like shifting something foundational midstream. It is easy to read as procedural, but harder to ignore in practice. That is why it deserves more than quick reactions. It needs a careful pause.

I still remember my engineering days in the 1990s. Five years of calculations, sketches, and long nights figuring out problems that did not immediately make sense. But what stayed with me, oddly enough, were not only the formulas, designs, or structural analyses. It was literature, where I learned to read between lines; logic, which trained me to question my own assumptions; even those seemingly “extra” classes that did not directly compute load or stress. In a BANI and VUCA world—fragile, anxious, non-linear, and often confusing—those courses did more than fill units. They gave me language for uncertainty and tools for judgment. That part rarely appears in curriculum audits, but it shows up in real life, often when it matters most.

The current push to streamline the curriculum is not without reason. This has been clear for years: our programs tend to be heavy on units, but lighter on real-world experience (EDCOM II, 2026). Employers want graduates who can step into work with confidence. Families think about cost and time. These are everyday realities. CHED’s shift toward outcomes-based and industry-aligned education is shaped by these concerns. It is not disconnected—it is trying to respond.

Yet the tension begins when “responsive” quietly becomes “reductive.” The course-by-course displacement analysis circulating in discussions tells a story that numbers alone cannot soften. Ethics compressed into a unit. Mathematics removed entirely from the core. Psychology gone. Arts moved to the margins. Philosophy thinned. One can understand the intent—to remove redundancy, to align with senior high school—but the effect feels heavier than the rationale. When entire disciplines lose space, it is not only faculty loads that are affected. It is the range of thinking we allow students to practice.

This is where the caution associated with former CHED chief Popoy de Vera’s reflections feels worth holding on to, not as resistance, but as restraint. Education reform, he suggests, must not shrink the idea of education itself. Universities are not only pipelines for employment; they are one of the few places where a student can still encounter ideas that do not immediately serve a function. UNESCO’s idea of 21st-century skills—critical thinking, creativity, collaboration—goes beyond focused training. These often come alive when disciplines connect and challenge each other.

In the local setting, this is familiar. A civil engineer working on flood control faces not just technical concerns but public trust. An IT professional handles not only systems but issues of privacy and bias. A teacher does more than teach; they quietly read the needs of their students. These are not abstract situations. They are real, recurring, and often unresolved. The disciplines we label as “general” are precisely the ones that help make sense of them.

At the same time, the critique that GE can feel bloated or disconnected is also valid. Some courses are taught in ways that feel detached from students’ realities. Some institutions load subjects more for compliance than for coherence. Students sometimes drift through GE classes, completing requirements without meaningful engagement. These are honest problems. 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 experienced.

Faculty groups have also raised concerns about academic freedom, employment, and the narrowing of intellectual diversity on campuses (de Villa, 2025). When large portions of GE are reduced or shifted, teaching loads shrink, particularly for those in the humanities and social sciences. These are not just numbers on a staffing sheet. They give space to voices—fields that challenge, pause, and complicate what seems simple. Remove them, and a university may still operate, but it feels different. A little too quiet, a little too smooth.

Then there is readiness. Moving everything to senior high sounds neat on paper, but schools are not equally prepared. Gaps in resources and support remain. In fact, EDCOM II notes that CHED curriculum updates can take around a decade to complete. Moving too much, too soon, risks creating gaps that universities will eventually have to patch, perhaps informally, perhaps inconsistently.

Interestingly, industry itself does not seem to be asking for less education. Groups like the Government Academe Industry Network have pushed to restructure GE—not abolish it—highlighting communication skills and national identity as priorities (as discussed in De Vera, 2025). This distinction matters. It suggests that what is needed is not subtraction, but recalibration. There is a difference between making something leaner and making it thinner.

The inclusion of labor education is a good example of reform done with intention. It recognizes that students need to understand their rights, responsibilities, and the realities of work (CHED, 2026). It adds depth to employability rather than replacing it. One can imagine a GE program that does more of this—connecting ethics to actual workplace dilemmas, linking history to current policy debates, grounding communication in real community engagement. That kind of reform strengthens both relevance and reflection.

There is a quiet principle that seems to run through all of this, even if rarely stated directly: decisions should consider not only efficiency, but also formation. Not only what works now, but what endures later. Not only what is measurable, but what shapes judgment. This is not a sentimental argument. It is a practical one. In a world where information is abundant and often unreliable, the ability to think, discern, and connect ideas becomes more valuable, not less.

So the question is not whether General Education should be reduced or abolished. It is whether we are ready to live with what replaces it. A shorter curriculum may produce faster graduates. It may even ease financial burdens. But if it quietly narrows how students learn to think, then the cost will appear elsewhere—in decisions poorly made, in issues poorly understood, in a public that reacts quickly but reflects less.

The conversation unfolding now is not a clash between tradition and reform. 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 immediately useful—until the moment they are the only things that make sense of everything else.

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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 that is grounded in social justice and the pursuit of happiness. His views herewith do not necessarily reflect those of the institutions he is employed or connected with.