Diploma mills rising!

By Herman M. Lagon

There was a time when a master’s or doctorate felt almost sacred—a capstone of grit, patience, and ideas tested by long nights and tougher mentors. Yet somewhere between the rush for promotions and the ease of shortcuts, graduate education in the Philippines began to lose its shine. The latest report from the Second Congressional Commission on Education (EDCOM 2) hits close to home: a growing number of graduate schools, especially in teacher education and public administration, are becoming what people now whisper as “diploma mills.” These are schools that grant titles faster than they mold thinkers—an echo of what the late historian Renato Constantino once warned as “education for credentials, not for consciousness.”

The EDCOM 2 study, led by Anne Lan Candelaria and colleagues from Ateneo de Manila University, shows how half of graduate-school enrollees in the last decade come from education programs, yet the country’s student learning outcomes remain at the bottom of global benchmarks like TIMSS and PISA (OECD, 2023; EDCOM 2, 2025). It is a painful irony: we produce more master teachers, but fewer masterful classrooms. The mismatch, according to the study, stems from a system that rewards paperwork over performance. Many teachers pursue graduate degrees because the Department of Education’s promotion matrix gives points for diplomas, not necessarily for impact. It is a bureaucratic loop that turns professional development into a transaction instead of a transformation.

In a Facebook thread that went viral last week, several teachers confessed that they enrolled in the fastest, cheapest graduate programs they could find—some online, others through weekend “modules.” One teacher from Quezon City admitted she finished her master’s in barely a year while juggling a full-time job and three kids. “We just needed the points for ranking,” she wrote candidly. Her post gathered thousands of reactions, mostly from colleagues who felt the same pressure. It is easy to blame them, but harder to ignore the structure that pushes them toward convenience. When salaries stagnate and promotions hinge on paper, even honest professionals are tempted to take the express lane.

CHED data cited by EDCOM 2 reveal that eight of ten graduate students do not even finish their programs within the prescribed period. Many get stuck midway, not for lack of intellect, but for lack of time, funds, or guidance. Those who do graduate sometimes emerge with diplomas that look the same regardless of rigor. A thesis defended after two years of fieldwork carries the same weight as one ghost-written by someone else for a fee. The problem is not just moral; it is systemic. Senator Sherwin Gatchalian’s 2024 probe on “diplomas for sale” in Cagayan and Chinese students allegedly paying millions for degrees (Rappler, 2024) exposed how weak the oversight mechanisms remain even at the national level. When shortcuts are normalized, learning becomes ornamental.

The rise of “fly-by-night” graduate schools also highlights the uneven geography of opportunity. Many of the more rigorous programs are concentrated in Metro Manila and urbanized cities, leaving provincial teachers with limited access. As EDCOM 2 noted, structural inequalities make it harder for educators from rural or coastal areas to pursue quality graduate studies without uprooting their families or spending beyond their means. The result is predictable: the same universities that can afford to maintain full-time PhDs tighten their grip on prestige, while smaller state colleges struggle to keep up or resort to easier requirements just to stay afloat. This mirrors what education philosopher Louie Giray (2023) calls “vertical elitism,” where policies designed for uniformity inadvertently punish diversity.

One cannot discuss this issue without touching on CHED’s well-intentioned but sometimes paralyzing rules. Its 2019 memorandum on “vertical alignment” requires that faculty in graduate programs hold all their degrees in the same discipline. The goal is academic coherence, but the effect, as John Montecillo (2025) described, is that regional schools lose flexibility to hire interdisciplinary experts. Imagine a civil engineer who shifted to education after years in the field; under the rule, he cannot teach in a master’s in Technology Education program because his PhD is in leadership. It is the academic equivalent of saying a bilingual person cannot translate because their languages do not “align.” Rules preserve standards, but when taken too literally, they calcify learning.

Beyond bureaucracy, there lies a deeper cultural issue—the Filipino fixation on titles. A “Doctor” prefix still carries an almost mystical aura, often more than the work behind it. In government meetings, the order of introductions sometimes matters more than the content of discussion. Some universities even advertise the number of their PhD holders as proof of quality, regardless of actual quality research output. In many cases, “Dr.” has become less a mark of wisdom than a social badge. As one Rappler columnist once quipped, “We are a nation that loves honorifics but fears honest critique.” This obsession breeds pretense. It encourages teachers to chase degrees not to think deeper but to be treated better.

Still, it would be unfair to dismiss all graduate programs as hollow. Many schools—public and private—continue to uphold rigor, mentoring students through sleepless nights, revisions, and defenses that truly test understanding. I have seen teachers from Antique or Guimaras travel every weekend to Iloilo or Cebu just to attend face-to-face classes, returning home at dawn before another school day. I have also met students who spent years collecting data from coastal barangays only to revise entire chapters after feedback. These are not just scholars; they are fighters. Their struggle proves that quality learning exists—and that it deserves protection from those who sell shortcuts in its name.

This is where EDCOM 2’s call for quality control becomes necessary, not punitive. Its proposal for a “tiered regulatory approach” is sensible: not all higher education institutions should be treated equally. Schools with proven track records should have more academic autonomy, while those with repeated deficiencies should undergo stricter review. CHED can also publish a transparent “white list” of graduate programs that meet standards, similar to how the Professional Regulation Commission identifies accredited training centers. This empowers both teachers and employers to make informed choices. As Dr. Karol Mark Yee, EDCOM 2’s executive director, said, reforms must “move beyond simply accepting degrees from any recognized institution.” In plain terms: not all diplomas deserve equal weight.

Of course, the government must also fix the incentive system that fuels the diploma race. The Department of Education’s ranking guidelines, though well-intentioned, should shift from credentials-based to competency-based evaluation. Teachers’ classroom performance, innovation, and student outcomes should carry more weight than certificates. One possible model is Japan’s lesson-study approach, where teacher promotions consider peer mentoring and collaborative improvement rather than mere paper accumulation. Locally, some divisions have piloted peer-observation rubrics that recognize genuine pedagogical growth. These may be modest steps, but they reflect the kind of reflection-in-action that deep learning requires—what some spiritual educators call “formation over information.”

The point is not to police ambition but to purify it. Graduate education, when done right, deepens both skill and soul. It trains minds to question, connect, and create. Yet when done wrong, it breeds arrogance masked as expertise. The late Fr. Roque Ferriol once said that true learning is measured not by the height of one’s degree but by the depth of one’s compassion. That is what many of our graduate schools must remember. A master’s degree should make one more humane, not more entitled; a doctorate should expand one’s patience, humility, and depth, not one’s ego, hubris, and narrow mindedness. These qualities do not appear on a transcript, but they define the kind of teachers and leaders our nation desperately needs.

If we allow diploma mills to thrive unchecked, we risk normalizing mediocrity at the very top of our educational pyramid. What message does it send to students when their teachers buy the very credentials that are supposed to inspire them? Integrity cannot be outsourced. The purpose of higher learning is not to inflate resumes but to sharpen discernment—the quiet, consistent habit of asking what is true, what is good, what is just, and what is worth pursuing even when no one is watching. These are the lessons that no easy degree can teach but every genuine scholar must learn.

Perhaps the real test of a graduate education is not in the defense room or the regalia stage but in what its holder does afterward. Do they write, teach, and lead with renewed sense of service and social justice? Or do they simply hang their framed diploma beside the next certificate and their dust-collecting theses? As EDCOM 2’s study reminds us, quality education begins with honest systems and ends with honest people. Reforming graduate schools will not be easy—nor should it be. But if we want a country led by thinkers instead of title-holders, the work must begin where it hurts most: in our own standards. After all, the goal of education has never been just to make us learned, but to make us worthy of being listened to.

***

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 or connected with.