WHO should decide academic disputes in our colleges and universities? Pursuant to the constitutional guarantee of academic freedom, higher education institutions establish their own rules governing all aspects of their operations, as long as they comply with standards set by the Commission on Higher Education.
This policy environment creates a constant and healthy tension between higher education institutions and the CHED, as they determine what falls within the institutions’ academic freedom and what falls within the commission’s mandate to oversee the higher education sector. In many cases, however, the elastic constitutional mandate of reasonable supervision and regulation is overstretched, especially in cases involving student claims against institutions. On the one hand, the CHED believes its current powers under Republic Act 7722 are insufficient to address students’ complaints and other issues, while higher education institutions feel their academic freedom is often threatened.
A growing chorus in the legislature now suggests that the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) should be given adjudicatory powers, effectively turning it into a quasi-court for the entire higher education sector.
That proposal is not simply a matter of administrative tidying up. It cuts to the heart of our constitutional order and the very nature of academic freedom.
At first glance, concentrating more power in CHED might look like an efficient, even logical, reform. Why not let the sector regulator directly resolve conflicts involving higher education institutions? But a closer look at our Constitution, our jurisprudence, and the practical realities of higher education governance reveals that this is a deeply misguided idea.
Academic freedom is a constitutional guarantee, not a regulatory afterthought.
The 1987 Philippine Constitution mandates the reasonable supervision and regulation of all educational institutions and guarantees academic freedom in all institutions of higher learning. The constitutional framers and the Supreme Court have consistently distinguished supervision from control: supervision means oversight to ensure compliance with laws and standards; it does not include the power to manage, overrule, or substitute the State’s judgment for that of educational institutions. Granting CHED adjudicatory powers would cross this line and move from supervision into control.
CHED’s mandate under Republic Act 7722 is already robust and essentially administrative and developmental, not adjudicatory. CHED currently issues permits and recognitions, monitors and investigates compliance, and can revoke permits and order program closures, powers which the Supreme Court has affirmed, as in Mandaue City College v. CHED. There is no doubt that CHED, under its current powers, can close “diploma mills” because the power to grant permits includes the power to withdraw. These are legitimate tools of external governance and standards setting. By contrast, adjudication, which is the power to settle actual controversies, determine legal rights, and award damages, is inherently a judicial function that properly belongs to the courts and existing quasi-judicial bodies.
Expanding CHED’s role into adjudication threatens constitutional academic freedom and institutional autonomy. Jurisprudence, including Garcia v. Faculty Admission Committee and Ateneo de Manila University v. Capulong, recognizes the four essential freedoms of universities: to determine on academic grounds who may teach, what may be taught, how it shall be taught, and who may be admitted to study. Courts themselves intervene in academic judgments only in cases of marked arbitrariness or grave abuse of discretion, acknowledging that they lack the competence and, therefore, should have no inclination to act as admission or grading committees to override decisions of university officials. Allowing CHED to adjudicate internal academic disputes would unduly intrude into these protected spheres.
Conflict of interest
Granting CHED adjudicatory powers would create a conflict of interest and blur governance lines. CHED is both the sector regulator and, under Republic Act 8292, directly involved in the internal affairs of state universities and colleges. Asking the same body to regulate, participate in internal governance, and adjudicate disputes involving those institutions concentrates excessive power and undermines trust in fair, impartial resolution of conflicts.
Impractical burden
There are serious practical and capacity constraints. The higher education system encompasses more than 3 million students, around 150,000 faculty, and over 2,000 higher education institutions nationwide. Tasking CHED with adjudicating complaints from this entire sector would require building a large, specialized adjudicatory apparatus comparable to bodies such as the National Labor Relations Commission (NLRC), Human Settlements Adjudication Commission (HSAC), or the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). This would divert substantial resources and attention away from CHED’s core mission of policy development, quality assurance, and sectoral improvement.
What may appear as an institutional “strengthening” of CHED by granting adjudicatory powers would, in reality, overstretch and distort its mandate, shifting it away from its primary developmental and regulatory functions.
CHED’s powers should remain administrative, developmental and externally regulatory, and that adjudication of disputes in higher education should continue to reside in the courts and existing quasi-judicial bodies, in full fidelity to our constitutional commitments to academic freedom, reasonable regulation, and complementarity in the higher education sector.